What a Year...huh?

Fluctuations in the Inevitable Passage of Time

It’s hard to believe that it’s only (and already) April.

Easter seems a million miles away already, like a Bu-cce’s billboard in the rearview mirror…its promises of comfort and nourishment disappearing as quickly as it came. Too often these holy sacred days come and go without much thought or fanfare, and it makes me sad how easy it is to push forward into the next thing without stopping to enjoy the goodness that is set in front of us.

At the same time, moments in time slow to a crawl. Traffic drives us crazy. With gas prices rising we might be gauging gas for the first time in years. Standing at the pump and stopping it at just the right time to make sure we don’t go over the gas budget before the next paycheck is excruciating. Here in Oklahoma, bad weather days leave everyone on edge about whether or not tomorrow there will be roofs over our heads. (Spring in the Midwest is an adventure, friends.) There’s a slow, impatient release of a possible impending doom weighing down evenings.

Though my examples might not be universal, I’m pretty sure the experience is. Time fluctuates wildly and yet is predictable as the ebbing and flowing of the tides. If you look for the patterns, it’s almost as if you can set your watch to its erratic nature. To quote every older woman who ever said a word to a mother with a newborn baby, “The days are long, but the years are short.”

What’s the point of reflection upon this old adage that everyone knows and maybe rolls their eyes at because it’s so trite and predictable?

I guess it’s just that these days, the experience seems so….visceral. Am I growing so old that I’ve started to feel the passage of time in my bones? That each day, minutes and hours stretch me like taffy? These are the longest years of my life (with good reason) and there are days I believe I might break. Each day brings about a fresh new hell on social media that I’m not sure we are created to see. Overexposure to a twenty-four hour news cycle leads to dopamine overload which brings us to compassion fatigue and generalized anxiety about the things we cannot fix. I don’t want to be tired of caring, friends. I realize we cannot carry every little thing that needs our emotional attention, but goodness. This may not seem like it belongs in this conversation about time, but just bear with me.

With these wildly long days and incredibly short years (slow DOWN, 2026) and the constant bombardment of chaos that threatens to desensitize our hearts and rob us of that oh so Divine Spark that makes us both holy and human?

I think we need to remember how to be quiet and still.

I am not one who adheres strictly to a liturgical calendar. I don’t know too many monastic practices (though I’m interested and learning). I live a busy life—a beautiful marriage, four kids, a teaching job, grad school, writing…there’s a lot on my plate. And not a single bit of it is going anywhere any time soon, nor would I want it to. These are all part of the ebb and flow of my life.

Oh, but tides have a rhythm if you just listen. And it’s hard to listen when there is so much other noise clambering for your attention. I don’t think the solution is caring less about what is going on around me, but maybe it is something about shutting out many of the voices. I cannot give all the world’s problems my attention all the time (and neither can you).

Please don’t think I’m suggesting we deal with this issue by shutting everything out. But maybe we occasionally shut everything down. This year is flying by, and we will not make it if we don’t rest. Just a little.

Turn off your phone or close that computer. Say a prayer. Get some sleep. Time’s passing as time passes no matter what. Lean back into the waves and let them take you where they take you.

I hope this makes sense. If not, I hope you enjoyed the journey. I’m practicing the art of following my thoughts where they go, not where I think they need to end up.

Blessings, friends.