From Our Minister: Time is a Gift
Life is changing every moment, but sometimes it’s more obvious than others. Sometimes it hardly seems to move at all. Like the clock is ticking, but the big hand is not moving. Other times it’s whizzing round the clock face and we can hardly keep up.
My dad told me that time seems to speed up as we age because of perspective. When we’re little, one year might be one sixth of our life experience. Of course, that seems so very long. By the time we hit 80, each year is only 1/80 of our experience. A blink.
Plus, time has a mind of its own and creeps along when we’re anticipating something good – but rushes by when we’re preoccupied. You know how fast time flies when you’re on your Insta feed or Facebooking. Or reading a really good book. I’ll look up from the page at bedtime and wonder how it got so darned late!
We don’t have a lot of control over time. It is both one of the defining characteristics of this human experience and something we haven’t quite figured out. The only thing we can control over is how we use our time, where we put our attention; how much we lose worrying over the past we cannot change. How much time we waste on unhelpful emotions like regret or revenge – or even nostalgia.
We reclaim control when we guide our attention back, again and again, to a place of love and wonder. To a place where we pay attention to details, and to relationships with the people around us. Where we make it a spiritual practice to spend as much time as we can in the present moment.
When my kids were small, I had a picture on the wall that I’d cross-stitched while I was pregnant. From a poem by Ruth Hulbert Hamilton, it read:
Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
For children grow up we’ve learned to our sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
What might need your attention this day before it slips away? How can you hold onto the precious but limited moments we are each offered?
You might listen to a thunderstorm, watch a robin catching worms, observe how the light crosses your kitchen window. In that moment, take a breath and remember to be fully present. This gift of life comes in tiny increments, and we are most blessed when we can accept them all with a grateful heart.
~ Rev. Pam