This one gets a little deep.
Every artist knows what Eternity is. We’ve touched it. There’s another word more commonly used in the vernacular. We call it “the Zone.” In ancient usage the idea is called Eternity.
As a child I thought of Eternity as something that happens later. That my current life is a prologue to the actual event, which happens after my body dies.
As an adult I see this differently. There comes a moment when I’m performing when I no longer think of what I’m doing. I no longer judge. I know longer even truly make conscious decisions about what I’m doing. I have a general idea of what I’m attempting. I make the attempt sans judgement, sans discretion, sans consciousness. I barely remember what happened after I’ve finished.
I am bulletproof, up there on the stage. I cannot do anything wrong. Everything I do is the right decision, not because I planned it that way, but because everything I do I then weave into whatever happens so it seems to be all pre-planned. I do this without thinking. Without contemplating. I just do it.
And I absolutely cannot explain it. Everything I just said is true, but not. Artists and athletes know exactly what I’m talking about. Waiters, too, if they’re really good. Authors know this. Painters.
You know you’ve touched Eternity when you don’t realize how much time has passed. It isn’t that you don’t know how much time has passed. It’s that you don’t know any time passed at all. Why? You were living in Eternity.
Eternity isn’t a future thing. It’s right now. It’s a comedian in front of an audience who has no idea what he just said and wishes he could remember because it worked so well. It’s a painter who started right after supper and doesn’t have any idea time is passing until the sun shines through the window the next morning. It’s the writer who keeps scribbling or pecking away until his tummy or bladder insists upon his attention.
Eternity is oblivious to clocks. It cannot be tracked. It simply is. Artists know about this. That makes us priests, in a way, and we have an obligation to those in the communities we serve to bring them in to contact with this Eternal reality as well.
When we achieve that, we’re finally doing our job.
