Ecclesiastes: The illusion of vanity and the reality of love (VII)

“A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones and a time to heap up stones. A time to embrace and a time to be far from embracing. A time to seek and a time to destroy. A time to keep and a time to cast away.” (Ecclesiastes 3:4-6)

Weeping and mourning can be preconditions to laughing and dancing as the culmination of the lessons learned with our suffering. This does not mean that we have to cry and lament in order to find joy and delight, but to understand negative situations and experiences as processes that direct us to appreciate their opposite qualities.

“To appoint to mourners in Zion, to give to them beauty instead of ashes; the oil of joy instead of mourning, a mantle of praise for a spirit of weakness; and He is calling to them, ‘Trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord to be beautified’.” (Isaiah 61:3)

We repeat often that life in the material world is a learning process designed to assimilate the transcendence of goodness as the reason and purpose our existence. Thus we understand that there are stones that obstruct our progression, and also there are stones on which we build the leading traits and qualities of our essence and true identity.

As we see obstacles before us we also strive for gathering the lessons we learn as the building stones that help us pursue what truly matters in life.

In this journey of progression we embrace what nurtures us and encourages us to live in goodness for the sake of goodness, and we reject the negative traits and trends that obstruct our purpose in this world.

In this journey of our soul we all are compelled to seek as part of the empirical process of learning from positive and negative experiences. As we seek and experience, we also compel consciousness to discard or destroy what we recognize as the opposites of the goodness we enjoy in love’s ways and attributes.

This is the culmination of keeping what nurtures, dignifies, honors and elevates life while casting away the destructive, despising, dishonoring and degrading traits and trends in human consciousness.

“A time to rend and a time to sew. A time to be silent and a time to speak.”

(Ecclesiastes 3:7)

We can understand the first phase of this verse as necessary actions we must take before situations that we can’t afford to allow in our midst.

We must urge ourselves to respond in outrage against negative ideologies and beliefs that seek to destroy the dignity of life, and pursue their destruction by all means necessary. We memorialize the genocides and atrocities perpetrated throughout history not just to remember the horrors committed against humanity but to bring awareness in regards to the ideologies and beliefs that led to such depravity.

As our sages remind us, we must fight to eliminate sin and not the transgressors. Thus we sew the garments we rend once we end the time to be silent in order to speak out and act accordingly. As we strive to live in goodness’ loving kindness, it will always show us God’s ways and paths.

“Cause me to hear Your loving kindness in the morning for I trust in You. Cause me to know the way in which I should walk for I lift up my soul to You.”, “All the paths of the Lord are loving kindness and truth for those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.”

(Psalms 143:8, 25:10)

Silence is the space we need to meditate and reflect on the things that matter, and make the right decisions when we choose between the vanity, futility and vexation of ego’s fantasies and illusions and the honor, truth and transcendence of love’s ways and attributes.

“A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:8)

This verse seals the messages king Solomon gives us in the previous ones, for indeed there is a time that comes either sooner or later to appreciate, respect, honor and love what celebrates our essence and true identity; and an time to hate, reject, repudiate and condemn all that threatens and harms who we really are.

In this awareness we wage war against that by all means, for this war is the necessary means to pursue and achieve peace as the wholeness, completion and totality of the full knowledge that God dwells in our midst.