Creating Deep Time
An Invitation to See with Ancient Eyes
This essay is a reflection on Creating Deep Time, a unique workshop experience sponsored by The Hearst Center for the Arts and facilitated by EarthWhispers Abbey co-founders Sue Scuerman and Felicia Babb Cass.
Through guided meditations, reflection prompts, and immersive engagement with nature, participants—Anna Long, Craig S. Long, Bryan Vandonslear, and Heather Flory—captured moments that transcend the present, offering glimpses into what it means to see the world through ancient eyes.
The photo illustrations within this essay are more than visual records; they are windows into a deep-time consciousness shaped by stillness, attention, and reverence.
We invite you, the reader, to pause with each image, engage with the reflection prompts, and consider your own journey. How might you, too, practice seeing with ancient eyes? We warmly welcome you to share your reflections and become part of this contemplative dialogue.
Reflections
1) How do you spend your days — pursuing passions or chasing obligations?
Anna Long:
Time is seasons of planting and seasons of harvest.
Bryan Van Donslear: Something Once There, Now Gone
Craig S. Long: Shaded Hearts
“We listen. We hear. We sing back. Our echoes ripple forth far into future generations, as laughter.
Jiling Lin
Reflection 2) Is there a sense of fullness in your time, or an ache for something missing?
Heather Flory: A Soft Place to Land.
Time cradles us with gentle hands, offering a soft place to land when the world feels too sharp.
Every ending folds into a beginning, and every fall teaches us how to rise lighter than before.
Sue Schuerman: Allow time to bloom. Throw confetti, celebrate spring.
Felicia Babb-Cass
Time is eternal and ephemeral
Craig S. Long
Time contains texture. It is the veins of life. Time is a hidden doorway, opening only for those who dare to listen beyond the ticking hours. In its secret chambers, the soul unfurls, ancient and new, toward its unseen becoming.
Anna Long:
Time is small details. Time weaves itself into the smallest details — a glint of light, a whispered breath, a half-forgotten dream.
In these quiet moments, entire worlds unfold, waiting for you to notice them.
Reflection 3) Who calls for more of your energy, presence, or love?
Bryan Van Donslear
Time is personal and impersonal, historic, and future oriented. Those who call for my energy exist within the paradox of time — at once deeply personal and yet part of an impersonal, unfolding continuum.
In answering them, I step into a dialogue not just with my own life, but with history itself and the future still in the making.
Craig S. Long: Twisted Time
“No matter what the shenanganbs of her human children, our mother earth reminas a generous spirit.” Cascade Anderson Geller
Felicia Babb-Cass
Those who call for more of my energy are often the ones I’m quickest to overlook — the so-called "weeds" of my life, stubborn, wild, and true.
But maybe, like pulling dandelions or cutting away "empty" time, I’m too quick to discard what was actually rooting me in something. What is “weed”? What is flower?
Reflection 4) What dreams are waiting for you to make space for them?
Heather Florry: The Start of Something New
Quiet dreams press against the edges of my days, like green new shoots straining toward light through cracks in the old ways of living.
They wait, patient and trembling, for me to clear the space where they can finally take root and rise.
Heather Florry: A Soft Place to Land
Beneath our fleeting footprints lies an earth that has breathed through eons, held the laughter and laments of lives long vanished, and will cradle others long after we are gone. The world remembers in silence what we forget in haste: that we are only passing shadows, gliding briefly across the skin of time. With each sunrise, something is born, and something dies—petals unfold, leaves fall, hearts stir and still. We are not the beginning, nor the end, but a moment—a shimmering thread in the vast, ever-turning tapestry of life.
A Continuing Journey Beyond the Frame
As you come to the end of this visual and reflective journey, we hope the images and prompts have stirred something within—a memory, a question, a feeling of deeper connection to time and place.
Creating Deep Time was never about reaching a final insight, but about learning to dwell in the unfolding mystery of the world around us. The workshop may have concluded, but its invitation endures: to slow down, to look again, and to trust that what is ancient can still speak through the quietest moments. If any part of this essay resonated with you, we encourage you to pause, reflect, and share your own impressions.
Your voice becomes part of the living conversation, adding new layers of meaning to this evolving exploration of time, perception, and presence.
Sue and I are grateful to the Hearst Center or the Arts for sponsoring this community conversation about time.