So she came through the “shake the hand of the pastor” line after worship. There was that moment of faint recognition: “Wait, I know you and you know me.” Then came the realization – YOU! She was a teenager in my very first church. And now, 20 years later, she is a professional woman with a child under her wing. Suddenly there is the time travel, the going back, retracing the steps of the past, with one, two, three, scores of people in multiple events. The one person provides access to a different time and place.
And that’s how it works, our time travel, that is really chapter upon chapter of life, sandwiched into our memory and experience. If we live fully in each chapter that is given, they accumulate, relationships layering our way, enriching our community of the living and the dead. There is a cloud of witnesses, and loved ones, and losses. All together they comprise our little slice of life.
Imagine all those slices side by side, layered and variegated, informing one another and completing the big story as well.
Now. Then. Tomorrow. All the same thing, really. And then there is timelessness and placelessness, transcending any time and any place. My God, it’s an ocean, a galaxy, light years of infinite space, and what is beyond it. And all right here, in this coffee cup, ceiling fan, news of disaster, the fog across the fields.
vitalwholeness 