Time: Luxuriating in the Supremely Gutful Lassitude.

A few years back my wife Michelle picked up a complete stranger whom she had mistaken for someone else.  He was a homeless veteran with a hook for a hand, who'd just been released from prison a few day before after serving a multiple year sentence.  They sat down to a bottle of Coke and had a pleasant conversation.  In his mid-40's he'd gotten his degree while in prison, and at some point during those long lonely stretches of time in his cell, a change had taken place in his soul.  He allowed every hard knock, injustice, and failure to become fuel for a holy fire within.  He had become become a servant of the Lord, therefore a servant of mankind, and would dedicate himself to redeeming the homeless population of Indianapolis.  He became a close friend and partner to our family, and went on to get his masters degree while founding several homeless shelters within the city.  

Last week he sent me a quote that really spoke to me concerning time, and how it can be our slave-master or our workhorse.  He told me he would meditate on this phrase while in prison, a place where one is incapable of "doing" anything to change their circumstance, yet, strangely enough, this powerlessness can set the stage for the greatest change to take place within.

"He did not still feel weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of

convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes

and hours to which in its well state the body is slave to both waking and sleeping, now reversed

and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body’s pleasure instead of the body thrall to

time’s headlong course."  --William Faulkner