How to Make Time Stand Still

The days break and run and I crane my neck as they pass. Sometimes all I feel is the afterbreeze of a moment gone by. They tell me it means I’m getting old and I always laugh and agree. I thought it was just a tease…but science is telling me different.

“Time is this rubbery thing,” says neuroscience professor David Eagleman in an interview with New Yorker journalist Burkhard Bilger. “It stretches out when you really turn your brain resources on, and when you say, ‘Oh, I got this, everything is as expected,’ it shrinks up.”

The amygdala is the part of the brain that seats emotion and memory, he goes on to say. When something exciting happens—like a threat to your life, the amygdala seems to kick into overdrive, recording every tiny detail of the experience. The more elaborate the memory, the longer the moment seems to last. “This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older,” Eagleman says—why childhood summers seem to go on forever, while old age slips by while we’re dozing. The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass. (The New Yorker, Burkhard Bilger)

Life is familiar. So we do the only thing we can to slow the moments.

We run away together. 

Columbus in May

If every day is, well…everyday, then--shouldn’t we? When our spirits grow tired and our hearts drag the ground—isn’t it only natural to seek adventure? We do. My sweetheart takes my hand and we go. Because he knows what the scientists keep trying to prove.

Adam Galinsky, professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University says getting away from the familiar gives one the distance needed to gain a new perspectiveon everyday life. He even has evidence that immersing oneself in another culture—moving to another country—boosts creativity.

We don’t have time to travel abroad. We have just one lonely night. 

Shopping at the North Market

 It stretches long. 

Dinner at Gordon Biersch--with fresh-brewed lager.

It’s not another culture, but it’s different to us. We walk the streets of a different city; let our senses awaken to the unfamiliar.

And love is young again. Time moves slow. 

What makes time slow for you?

Take me away with you—let us hurry!
   Let the king bring me into his chambers. (Song of Solomon 1:4)

Jeff checks out the hot sauce.

At the North Market

At the Book Loft

Some of the cheese at Katzinger's Deli

Joining with Jen and the Soli Deo Gloria sisters:

Kyrie Eleison

Lyla tells me to park—to spend a week in one place. And the truth is I’m not so good at this. I’ve been parking in a certain book all year, but I can’t seem to get it to penetrate the hard shell of my heart.

On Monday at the Middle School band concert the parking is crazy. That lady doesn’t like where I pull my van and she says some things to me through her window—throws me a look. I throw one back. And all through the concert I feel that black look cast a shadow across my heart.

At work on Tuesday, I complain. I lean on the counter at the nurses’ station and tell my friend more black words. The words follow me all day—weighing me down, turning my eyes away from the good.

Thursday night, another concert at the Middle School. I promise myself not to let parking get me. But it’s the black words cast over someone I love before the show that leaves me in agony.

When will I learn? We sit shoulder to shoulder with other parents in dim light and listen to young voices fall over us from the stage. Jeffrey has been asked to play drums for the concert and I can hear the steady boom of his bass drum buoy me. But it’s the faces in the choir that twist my heart all around itself. I remember these kids in kindergarten—all chubby faces and sticky fingers. They’ve grown up beautiful and the way time tiptoes by makes my heart ache. 

I’ve been working outside all week. I finally got my little garden planted. Flower beds weeded and mulched. I’m sunburned and creaky about the joints and I have poison ivy. Tired. There is still more work to do and I feel the pressure to finish the job. But as I sit in the Middle School cafeteria and listen to those voices I think about the fat sunflower seeds I held in my hand earlier that day.

It takes strong faith to plant a seed. 

I remember a missionary telling us once that it was the hardest thing to convince the African people she served to do.

They were so hungry they wanted to eat the seeds right then, right there.

To convince them that planting would yield more—that waiting would be the better thing—this was the challenge when faced with these hungry faces.

Why can’t I plant this seed? I gobble it up hungrily and then it’s gone. No fruit, no crop, no hard shell softened and cracked so roots can burrow deep into rich soil. I make the same mistakes over and over and my black heart groans and cries for more.

A young girl walks up to the mic to introduce the next song.

The seventh and eighth grade chorus will sing Kyrie Eleison together. We hope you enjoy it. Kyrie Eleison means, Lord have mercy.

They start to sing but I am stuck on that simple prayer. The gentle lilting of the prayer fills me. And in the middle of the Middle School spring choral concert He comes to me—floods me with grace.

In those moments, I pray Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. And my black heart lifts and fills with light. 

How about you? How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. And come tell us about it.

Grab my new button at the bottom of the page and join us!

 

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also:

Playdates: The Beauty of Dying

He is passionate about funerals and communion and children in worship and says that worship should be about us sharing the stories of the Word. He has written a book on worship and I have read it from cover to cover—highlighting and underlining bits that speak story to me. He has come from Maryland to teach us about worship and I have driven from my now home to the home where I grew up to meet up with him and my classmates. He is fluent on the piano and he makes us sing. We start off wobbly at first but we gain confidence at his encouragement and soon we are singing with our hearts.

The boys came with me and they are spending the day with my mother and part of me is distracted by this strangeness all day. Coming home is dying for me—letting go of the past and embracing love and forgiveness. When I drive to the church where our class is held I realize that if I keep going straight up the street I will come to Compton’s farm—one of the places we used to park in high school. Memories of stolen kisses haunt me as we discuss the Eucharist.

There is no more appropriate time than a funeral to celebrate communion, he says. Death is the consummation of everything our Lord celebrated in that final feast.

His voice is hushed with reverence and I am jarred by what he says.

Can I celebrate this death?

That first night my classmates get together in the hotel and drink wine and talk about amendment 10 but I drive the windy road to mom’s and sleep on the floor of her living room with one boy on the couch above me and the other asleep in an adjoining room. The windows are open and I listen to the sounds of my roots. I hear a train lumber nearby and its thunderous passing leaves me lonely in its wake.

This death is painful but I feel the beauty of the feast calling and I shift my pillow and let sorrow leak. They don’t believe that I know the One True God but He is with us the next day at dinner. I take the roll made by my mother’s hands and break off a bite.

It is soft in my mouth, rich and sweet, and I ache with the beauty of this dying. 

How about you? How do you embrace the God-joy? Every Monday I’ll be sharing one of my Playdates with God. I would love to hear about yours. It can be anything: outside, quiet time. Maybe it’s solitary. Maybe it’s loud and crowded. Just find Him. Be with Him. And come tell us about it.

 

Grab my new button at the bottom of the page and join us!

 

Sharing with L.L. Barkat today also:

Playing Outside and a Winner!

My New Year’s promise in 2011 is to play outside—if even only a little--every day. I made the mistake of telling this resolution to my children…and they hold me to it. Playing outside is something they just do—quite like breathing. So we enter into the promise together—my two growing boys and I— and I am taken by surprise by the sudden depth of longing it awakens in me.

In the confines of my grown-up life I have forgotten this feeling—this wonder and freedom that comes with no walls. In my grown-up life, when I want to grow or learn, I pick up a book. This is quite satisfying and I am happy this way—but after a time of stepping into the promise, I begin to remember.

It reminds me of childhood, this feeling.

Let's play outside...

What could spark such a commitment? In 2010, I went on a journey through God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us, by L.L. Barkat.  I was changed when I closed the final pages. Now, I'm participating in another God in the Yard journey, over at BibleDude's place. If you left a comment on my post over there, thank you! Your name was entered in a drawing to win a copy of God in the Yard. And now, it's time to announce the winner!

The winner of an all expense-paid-deluxe-copy of God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us is:

Deidra!

Congratulations, Deidra! I'll be in touch! After I play outside just a wee bit...

Save a Dance...

They come to this place to have their broken parts fixed and the people I work with work hard. They care, they really do.  But when the fixing needs a little nudge or there is no fixing to be done, they come and get me.

That’s how I end up sitting at his bedside. 

They told him there was nothing left that they could do. 

I’d met him before—in his sleep. We couldn’t get him to awaken so I sat with his family in the dim light with rain pattering the window. They told me who he is—who he was…what he likes to do…Who he loves. They told me how fast this has all happened.

He’s a tall man but his proud frame has wasted into a smallish one. The top of his head is fuzzy with new-growing hair. He keeps rubbing it when he talks to me. No longer asleep, he looks me in the eye. He can’t always find the words; his mind is still a bit fuzzy. But when he can’t get it out, he just looks at me with a vague smile and points up. 

Yeah. And I smile back. With watery eyes. Because I know exactly what he’s talking about. 

His family is quiet and he keeps reaching for his wife’s hand. The air flows gentle in this place. I ask because I can’t help myself and I ask if he will. We pray together. I hold his hand and it is strong and tender. His voice is sure as he leads this familiar conversation. When he is finished, he tells me that he will see me again one day.

We will be dancing with joy, he says.

Will you save me a dance? I ask.

Yes, he says. I will.

 

And when I turn my back and walk away, I carry something real with me.

Hope.

There is joy in the homecoming. There is great joy.

Precious in the sight of the LORD
   is the death of his faithful servants. (Psalm 116:15)

sharing with Emily today: