Spiritual "Poverty" and Eternity

  I start to realize that reading Kierkegaard's book Works of Love is inspiring me to use words like 'temporal' and 'eternal', ideas which are foreign to Buddhist philosophy. And Kierkegaard's notion of the eternal still remains somewhat mysterious to me. I would like to take time to write about what I am learning from him.
   One thing I greatly respect about this book is that it describes 'eternal' as opposed to 'empty', even though the two terms equate to a kind of infinite possibility that is always existing a little bit forward into the future. When people talk about the Buddhist concept of emptiness, there is this similar notion of things always being possible and potential-- a dynamic interweaving of forces in the environment which allows new combinations to arise constantly. And the principle in emptiness would be a co-dependent arising. But why would Kierkegaard use 'eternal' to describe this? Is Kierkegaard perhaps referring to a more timeless sort of realm, similar to the realm of forms in Plato's philosophy?
   Some of this is not yet clear to me, but what I can glean from it is that the eternal is an act of turning to and believing in every possibility, since all things are possible with God. It means that there is no boundary and nothing that isn't possible since there is always grace in everything. Even something that seems like an ultimate tragedy or a disaster doesn't need to be seen as a closed situation, as though it had no more possibility beyond it. In fact, it then becomes that hope becomes an act of choice: I choose to believe that the world is not bounded by what's already happened in the past, but is always continually being 'created anew' by new sets of causes and conditions.
      Some modern thinkers tend to emphasize the "choice" aspect of this philosophy. In fact, existentialism seems to be characterized by this understanding that human life is based on choice. But is this all that Kierkegaard says--that we choose our own fates? I tend to think he is suggesting the opposite--that who we think we are is just another factor, and we can never fully see the eternal, any more than we can stare at the sun. That's because possibilities are infinite, and there is no way to know which way things will go with all the indeterminate factors in the universe. Grace would be the sudden insight that things don't need to be 'my' way or anyone's way, because there is a surrender: a final surmounting of the belief that "I" am in charge of what happens to me. But again this doesn't need to be a cause for despair. It is rather knowing that there is no permanent self to salvage, and what we do experience are moments that are constantly arising in time.
     If I think that this is somehow depressing, then I am still holding onto the self that is supposed to have a static purpose in life. In that way, I am closing the possibility of any other way of seeing the situation. It is as though I have already seen how a movie ends so I despair of wanting to see the movie again. But if I am holding to the eternal, I am aware that the same movie can be viewed an infinite number of times, with infinite perspectives. All that is really limiting me from this infinity is my own tendency to close off further meanings or possibilities--perhaps wanting to salvage an enduring sense of separate self.