Holding Time

"How can you hold time?"

Laughing, I ask if she means "stop" instead of hold.

My sister says that she isn't ready for school to start again. Already she has spent many hours preparing lesson plans for little wiggling children and selecting the repertoire for two choirs. And Tuesday / Thursday she will have classes straight from 8 until 5! She sighs. Tired, comfortable, and crocheting steady waves of color. Beauty turned warmth.

The portobello barley soup steams in my mouth and I wonder if it is possible. . . To hold time? To scoop up a handful and savor each sip. Certainly not easier than carrying an armful of gravity or damming up light into a lake.

This dizzy world is chasing time like a carrot on a stick. Thrifting, bargaining, and even saving up for it. And some people purchase time shares. But don't we all inhabit this same shared space?

Here. . . Now.

With her crotchet hook flashing in and out. Ivan's chuckles and Daddy's voice in the other room. Succulent mushrooms and friends calling on the phone to link the distance with this moment. Beautiful and warm and held.

Perhaps we understand best what we can hold - what we can touch. Like blueberries and canoes, pine cones and puppies, and 3-D models for studying organic chemistry.

So I am choosing to learn this art of holding time. To learn to kneel and notice these gifts. And it will take a lifetime of bending I know - but I am joyous to begin! And perhaps time does pool in lakes of color - even at my kitchen sink.

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from the beginning to the end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11