Becoming and Being

"Modern Western culture has absorbed the threefold Greco-Roman concept of time as "past" (that which has gone before), "present" (that which is), and "future" (that which will be).  It is easy to associate these concepts with the three Norns: Urdhr, Verdhandi, and Skuld.  It is also incorrect.  The Germanic time-sense is not threefold, but twofold: time is divided into "that-which-is," a concept encompassing everything that has ever happened - not as a linear progression, but as a unity of interwoven layers; and, "that-which-is-becoming," the active changing of the present as it grows from the patterns set in that-which-is.  That-which-is is the Germanic "world," a word literally cognate to the Norse ver-öld, "age of a man."  One will notice that even in modern English, there is no true future tense; the future can only be formed through the use of modal auxiliaries.  For the Teutonic mind, all that has been is still immediate and alive; the present only exists as it has been shaped by the great mass of what is, and the future only as the patterns of that which is becoming now should shape in turn."
-  By Kveldulf Gundarsson, Tuetonic Magic, p. 24.  

Time: Quotes, Poems, Sayings, Lore

One Old Druid's Final Journey: The Notebooks of the Librarian of Gushen Grove


"Time is something everyone runs short on and finally runs out of.
When gardening, half and hour is fifty minutes. 
Everywhere, what is, becoming past, present, and future. 
Time may wait for no man, but seems to muddle and poke along quite slowly for gardeners.    
Things always go downhill, fall apart, wear out  ... the arrow of Time pierces everything.     
Gardeners learn to live in worm time, bee time, and seed time. 
Gardeners turn into the soil their lifetime. 
Time will tell, but we often fail to listen.
The time you have wasted in your garden is what makes it priceless. 
All metaphors aside - only living beings rise up in the Springtime; dead beings stay quite lie down dead. 
Time prevents too much from happening at once. 
Gardening requires no commuting time. 
Each time we water can be like the first time if we are fully present in the moment.
One purpose of a garden is to stop time. 
Time will not pass you, but it will follow very close behind you. 
Time is rooted in Place. 
Annuals disappear, shrubs perish, trees die, and gardeners are buried; death is the flower of time.
Springtime for birth, Summertime for growth; and, all Seasons for dying. 
By the time you peel off five layers of reality, it's hard to recall the first. 
Winter does not turn into Summer; ash does not turn into firewood - on the chopping block of time.
The "eternal truths" are sometimes clearly false.
In the right place at the right time: tomato worms on tomato vines. 
Take the time to melt into the Details.  
In an instant there is nothing - Nature needs time.
Gardening teaches us to take our time, slow down, and wait in peace.
A garden flourishes in the mind's time of last season, next season, and now."
-   Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions

      The Three Norns: Urdhr (Wyrd), Verhandi, and Skuld before the World Tree of Yggdrasil.