Thank you both. It is interesting how examples so far separated in time and expressed in such contrasting styles say the same thing. Perhaps that validates the lesson.
It seems to me that the ever-present Now and the chronology of events also illustrate our duality, physical/spiritual. It also fits nicely with the telescope/microscope analogy and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, E=MC2.
Thanks again for helping me connect the dots.
You're welcome. But we're ALL still in the process of trying to connect the "mind-boggling" dots. :) Even at best, we are only able to see through a glass darkly.
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also he has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
Truly when we think of eternity we usually think of time without limit, infinite future and infinite past. That is a linear concept - the arrow of time.
Indeed, Aristotle used counting to express time passing (1,2,3...) and we experience serial/sequential events, we age, thermodynamic entropy happens (e.g. cars rust) - and so on.
But of a truth, time may not be linear at all. Indeed recent geometric physics theories by Vafa and Wesson both suggest there may be more than one dimension of time. In that case, time would be a plane or volume.
The latter could cause heartburn to many since physical causality (cause>effect) expands in volumetric time, i.e. cause>effect or effect>cause, etc.
When we speak of God and time (or the space/time continuum) we should always remember that space and time are part of the creation and not properties of the Creator of them. Thus the terms "timelessness" and "spacelessness" apply - not 0 dimensions of time (a mathematical point or singularity) but null, no time, void. Mathematical points are not nothing. Ditto for space.
The Jewish mystics use the term Ayn Sof when speaking of God the Creator. The term literally means "no thing" and the point is that any term we mortals would use to describe Him (e.g. time) actually reduces our understanding of Him to whatever term we used.
"Eternal Now" is a good expression of timelessness in my view. In Jewish mysticism, "Eternal Now" means that all of time (past, present, future) is "present" to God.But it must be distinguished from the other uses of the term.
For instance, "Eternal Now" in Zen Buddhism is living in the moment - which the New Agers take up as something akin to "if it feels good, do it."
Also in Jewish mysticism as well as some Christian belief, "Eternal Now" is the awareness of timelessness while yet in the flesh.
To that point, betty boop often quotes T.S. Eliot: "Man lives at the intersection of time and timelessness."
And there are levels of awareness of this being at the intersection between time and timelessness. Some may sense the moment by logic. And some may sense timelessness but secondary to a sense of time passing, an arrow of time.
And still others' sense of timelessness surpasses their sense of time passing. I am one of the latter, I am more aware of being alive in timelessness than I am of being alive in the flesh:
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20
I should also note, at the risk of sounding mystical, that a common testimony of those who have spiritually meaningful dreams or visions is that time is the moment, i.e. the Eternal Now.