Article December 29, 1980 Issue

Nowness

ANNA KOLB MICHAEL

One summer day I watched a colony of ants move to a new location. They traveled in a long thin line down a path through a clump of trees, across a dirt road, and disappeared in the tall grass. To one of the ants on the road, the path through the trees was in its past, the road was in its present, and the grass loomed ahead in its future. But from my vantage point it was all a single happening in the now.

As I thought about this, I reasoned that God—infinite Spirit, eternal Mind—does not see His reflection, man, crawling from an unhappy past, through a troubled present, into an uncertain future. God does not conceive of man as mortal at all. God's view of His creation is eternal—independent of time. God's man is immortal. Only material sense, depending on the evidence of the five physical senses, makes us think of ourselves in a limited (and limiting) way. How liberating it can be to see our identity as belonging to God—unhindered by sorrowful memories of the past, insecurities of the present, or dread of the future!

We can replace our personal, corporeal concept of God with the recognition that He is divine Love, the ever-caring Father-Mother of us all. A better concept of ourselves and of our neighbor results from a better understanding of man's unchanging relationship to God. Christ, Truth, brings this understanding to light. God is man's only creator, provider, and protector. Man is His beloved child.

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