Future Tense

Future tense

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

~ T. S. Eliot

The Weekly Photo Challenge (brought to us by the Daily Post @ WordPress.com) is Future Tense.  I had tons of ideas in mind, most of which avoided the obvious and the cliché.  Alas, none of those ideas panned out as well as the obvious and the cliché because right now, in the present tense, there are so many of us waiting for, hoping for, the promises and greenings and blossomings of spring.

Hope springs

We were gifted with a bright and gorgeous day here in the Bogs yesterday.  From the indoors looking out, it looked warmer than it was.  Both M and I commented on the deception of the day’s appearance.  Even after we’d been outside walking and working, we gazed through the glass of the windows at dinner time with yearning, both of us thinking and eventually talking about how it looked like a good evening to have dinner on the deck.

The future is present in any tense

How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet?  As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.

~ Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

So is the past

Out on my walk I pondered the idea of “future tense.”  Step by step it became increasingly clear to me that everything is a promise, a potential, a possibility.  Even the fallen grasses and leaves, having gone to earth, will rise again in some form.  They will become the earth, the nutrients, the new grasses and trees and leaves.

Spilling out the future

We had the experience but missed the meaning.  And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.

~ T. S. Eliot

It’s all here — past, present, future

As you can tell, I spent a bit of time with the crocuses.  The little flowers unfurled in the brightness of the sun.  Open and vulnerable, yet hardy (they must be to have survived this wintry spring), they build the present and whisper about the future and the promise of warmer things to come.

Lean in and listen

Time plays on earth, in the gardens, in the woods, in the water, in our bodies, in our minds.

Fleeting and enduring

We do not pass through the same door twice
Or return to the door through which we did not pass

~ T. S. Eliot

Looking for the doorway to spring

Thank you for stopping by and joining me for musings about promise, portents, and the future.  Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just be.  🙂

Someday the woods will be green again

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time… why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Past, present, future

Related articles

• Weekly Photo Challenge :: Future Tense (cherylandrews.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense (goingbeyondthecanvas.wordpress.com)
• weekly photo challenge: future tense (alwaysbobswife.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense (trishadm.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense (atelierzisiadou.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense – Smile (neophytephotographer.wordpress.com)
• Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense (sasieology.wordpress.com)