Where Does the Time Go?
- Mike Dickey
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it′s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I′d something more to say
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home, cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
-Roger Waters
Two weeks from now I sit down to take my first final. How can that be? We still have a weeks of classes yet.
And work is picking up dramatically, as if part of a conspiracy to interfere with study. I probably should have done this as a true sabbatical, but there were bills to pay.
Still, we've found time to relish these last few weeks in Manhattan. To the rooftop for happy hour every day. Turkish doner for lunch on Saturday. La Boheme at the Met on Saturday night (and an amazing discovery--if you're in the slightly more expensive seats, the seatback in front of you holds an LED that streams the lyrics in English. No more guessing what's happening onstage).
This perpetual state of business, this sense of stealing from more pressing obligations whenever I'm neither working nor studying (feeling it right now, in fact), hangs over every "idle" moment.
An essay I read in the Atlantic this weekend introduced me to a pastor who's flagged this as a spiritual sickness, or more accurately a "sin" in the sense that it creates a wall between ourselves and the divine.
I think this is behind a paywall, but you can find John Mark Comer's advice all over the internet.
It seems like I've spent all six years (!) on this blog complaining about this constant, gnawing sense that every rare moment of stillness I fall farther behind. Comer points to the long Christian tradition of being still as a spiritual discipline, from Jesus disappearing into a desert place through St. Benedict's monastic rules. Relationship with God is just like any other relationship, it turns out--one has to devote time and attention to the Other or it never happens. We all know that. P and I spent hours together, often just talking and maybe playing a record or two. It's not a chore, not a burden. So why should carving out a few minutes for higher things be like taking one's cod liver oil?
It shouldn't.
The view from the roof this weekend. The holy lurks up there, as well.
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