What we do in life echoes in eternity.
That was the tag line of one of my favorite movies of the last ten years: Gladiator.
It's a terrifying thought, that. All that we do in each instant of time is a word that echoes not for a year, or an age, but for eternity. The good words, and the bad we cannot erase, but can only beg to be forgiven for. It will form the music we must listen to in saecula saeculorum.
And not only in eternity. Each moment's choice of virtue or vice, justice or injustice, courage or cowardice, alters the music of time, as well. Each choice makes certain things possible, and dictates that other things will never happen unto the world's end.
What colossal responsibilities even a day's worth of human life contains!
In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.
