Carpe diem. Que sera, sera. There’s no time like the present. You can’t turn back time. Learn from yesterday, live today, hope for tomorrow. Time marches on. All the lyrics to this hymn.
Welcome, my friends, to the Henry Blake Cliché Festival (A M*A*S*H reference? Joe Cleveland’s right – I am old) … er, I mean, our hymn about time. John Andrew Storey sets to music (the McKee tune, which we last sang in Freedom Spans both East and West) the cliché of all clichés, that of time marching on and us living in the present.
I mean, it’s a fine sentiment, and useful at those moments when we must haul out all the old wisdom about time marching on; I imagine this would be useful after a significant hardship, or at the New Year, or in services about the eternal Now.
The ceaseless flow of endless time no one can check or stay;
we’ll view the past with no regret, nor future with dismay.The present slips into the past, and dreamlike melts away;
the breaking of tomorrow’s dawn begins a new today.The past and future ever meet in the eternal now:
to make each day a thing complete shall be our New Year vow.
But it surely is a bit of a cliché.
Not saying I won’t use it, but only if it truly serves the service.
One response to “STLT#350, The Ceaseless Flow of Endless Time”
Wait, I’m still confused about the relationship between the past and the future. Could this hymn explain it one more time?