Today, I will borrow my contribution from”Burnt Norton,” first of the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, my acknowledged maestro in all things Anglican. Whenever I ponder the word time, it is this poem that informs my musings:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
. . .
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Nor, considering the idea further, are these excerpts from that intricate and complicated poem entirely unrelated to the Advent of Our Lord Jesus Christ–the Incarnation in Bethlehem two millennia ago, the God who always with us, Emmanuel, and the coming again of the once and future King.