Players

Time was, when players were actors in plays, people performing for the delight of their audience in order to entertain and perfect their art and make some useful cash, all at once. That is the ghost of time that was.

Time is, when players are actors in plays, people performing for the delight of themselves in order to impose themselves on the world, in order to cry out HERE-I-AM and I-AM-SOMEONE. Such would not be necessary, if only they knew to be players, to be someone without having to be anyone, just as in the ghost of time that was.

For now is the long decline to the empty bed and the broken teacup, now is the need that is never filled. For if the self is not enough, how can more of it feed its own hunger?

Thank God that I live and move and have my being in the full awareness — apprehension, without comprehension — of what is greater than I. Thank God that I have awareness of stage, of audience, of producer and director. Thank God that I need be nobody, or anybody, to be somebody. Thank God that even the body is not the end, nor the only means to any end. And thanks be to God for the ideas of beginning and ending, for time and space, for the work of the play and the play of the work. Amen.