I recently read an essay by Czeslaw Milosz, a polish writer, diplomat and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who wrote of changing one’s past by acts we undertake in the present. It had always seemed to me that our present acts might change our future, but not our past. But now, I have come to realize that time measured in personal and not merely in linear terms, is a dynamic that changes life continually in all directions.
God is an eternal and dynamic spiritual Reality for whom time is our human invention for measuring temporal existence which can be totally transformed in every direction – past present, future, - by our awakening to the eternal dimension of Spirit that “comes and goes where it wills”…and we see & hear only its effects.
We can forgive ourselves of our past sins – God does – and thus transform our guilt over past errors as well as our future choices. This flexibility of time has social as well as personal implications. “Reparations” is a current call to repair the social wrongs of the past (slavery & racism) through present acts, thus leading into a forgiven past & a more humane future for all.
Christians should be at the forefront of changing both the past and future by awakening in the present to the transforming power of the Spirit of Love & Forgiveness in our past, present & future personal and collective lives.
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