Tapestry of Presence

I was taken aback by an image on Page 77 of DTS: the suggestion that our “concern” could allow us to view the present as encompassing entire geologic eras.  My immediate thought was that a longer span of time can certainly be a subject for inquiry, but a presence in which I feel myself situated?  Surely not.  A test for the sense of being present could be: “I am here.”  Where and when am I here?  My lifetime?  Perhaps that makes sense.  In fact, if I think of my lifetime as the present in which I am living, it feels useful.  I am here in this lifetime and it won’t last forever.  This perspective is not an abstract index of events imposed from outside but an opportunity for presence.  Various threads of past and future issue out of the tapestry of my lifetime (not yet fully woven).  They move beyond the frame anywhere I think of things such as my parents’ lives before I was born, or wonder what will happen to my children after I am gone.  It’s not at all like a single thread of time along which I happen to be situated.  This wider perspective certainly loosens the sense of linear time being the basis of my life. — Michael