toddler shoes in an antique store

Touching the present moment, we come to know the past created the present and together the future is being created. ~ Unknown

shoe lace I

Just as you unreel the thread from a spool,

I want the past to become present.

shoe lace II

The wife of Yoshitsune, a famous warrior in medieval Japan, wrote this farewell poem shortly after her spouse was deployed to the northern provinces where he later died.  She offers to us our creative ability to mentally bring the past alive and into the present.

shoe lace III

… “Time goes from present to past.”  This is not true in our logical mind, but it is in the actual experience of making past time present.  There we have poetry, and there we have human life.

~ cited in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki

shoe lace IV