There are two words for 'time' or 'eternity' in Egyptian language: 'djet' and 'neheh'. These are linear, irrevocable time and cyclical, regenerative time; the world exists in an interlacing of both.
The stories of myth, the workings of the gods, exist primarily in neheh; while they are frequently cast in terms of an ancient past, the playing out of those events continues in the visible world constantly, most obviously in the cycles of days, months, and years.
People live primarily in djet, in linear time; our births are once-ever events to us, our lives progress in linear sequence, and when we die, we pretty much just do it the once.
At the same time, though, as members of humanity, those lives progress in neheh: when we are born, we partake of that cyclical event of birth, something that everyone around us has been through. We sleep regularly, and wake regularly; we do our cyclical things.
So now for the metaphorical part of the broadcast: reality as a garden.
Zep Tepi, the moment of creation, is always present in our reality. We can always reach to it; we can always get our hands down in the dirt, the source of all our gardening goodness. The dirt is there, and the dirt will be there; we can reestablish creation by getting down into the fertile loam with our trowels and our mulching. The dirt may be the ancient past from one perspective, viewed in djet, the work of decomposition and erosion across generations, but the dirt is still there, under our hands, ready to give rise to our existence right now. We cannot be separated from it entirely.
When we get down to the raw dirt we're able to deal with the essence of creation that lies under our garden. When we're here and know we are, we can proceed straight from the source, dealing with the world as it is, dealing with that fertile force without having it confounded by other factors. We can know if we have clay, we can look at the Ph of our soil, we can learn what will grow here, we can move the earth easily, and we can plant.
When we plant, we plant in djet. The act of putting the plant in the soil is something that happens at a distinct point in time. It can't not have happened once we do it -- we can dig it up or cut it down or it can die, but these are also things that happen in djet. I have planted a cherry tree; I have planted an azalea; I have planted a lilac; I have planted bulbs and phlox and various other things that have not managed to survive. These are all in djet.
The lilac is blooming at this moment. But the lilac bloomed last year; the lilac will bloom next year; its blooming exists simultaneously in the linear and the cyclical.
The cherry tree was planted in djet. Gathering the fruit is a task that exists in neheh, even as each individual cherry extracted from around its pit has a moment in djet full of juice and tartness.
The dirt is always there, but that does not mean that the gardening is always good. We can remove the stones that get in the way of the work (djet) and we can weed (neheh) to keep the way to the dirt clear. The work of ma'at, of remaining in contact with the moment of creative inspiration, has both distinct things that need to be done or changed, but also the constant maintenance of perpetual work. It must be done in both djet and neheh.
In djet I built a low wall to shift the water flows in the yard and keep the dirt from washing away.
In neheh, it rains.