love's eternity

Eternity can mean a long time but it can also mean no time or timelessness. It can mean a place where time is irelevant for nothing changes. This is what we mean when we talk of eternal truths: they are for all time and for no time.



All around the Sydney footpaths and for more than forty years a man called Arthur Stace wrote a single word in chalk which earned him the name of "Mr Eternity". The word must have meant a great deal to him and it perhaps functioned like a mantram or prayer. Did he feel in touch with eternity? Or was he seeking it? Most believe he was reminding us all of it because we had lost touch with this dimension of being.

Eternity as timelessness is another concept that has been used to reach into the other world of transcendent forms whence the sacred issues forth. Until the connection is made between the mundane world of transient forms and this sacred world of eternity, the wholeness or completeness that is the goal of the alchemists cannot be attained.

Writing the word in chalk on footpaths was surely a way of trying to make that connection. It was a labour of love and all mystics agree that love is the bridge between the worlds.

Not all wounds can heal
Some pain goes too deep
No amount of time will do
But love's eternity