The passing of time is a natural thing. It is natural to the universe that we know. Time and space together in a dance of birth and life and death and rebirth. Endlessly recreating what God set into motion. Expanding into the unknown and creating new life as it expands.
I have wondered about time/space for about as long as I can remember. How does time pass uniformly? What is the totality of the known universe? If the universe is expanding, and for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, what is on the outside of the universe contracting? What is it expanding into? Is God bound by time and space?
Lindsay, my nephew Jeff's wife, and I talked briefly about this at dinner last night. I suggested God was outside time and space and that physical law; natural law; the laws that govern all matter and being which were created by God, is immutable. She disagreed. By the way, she has a biology degree so she's trained in scientific thought, but she's also a deeply devout evangelical Christian. She said that Jesus couldn't walk on water if God can't alter physics and time/space. It is a point worth pondering.
Anyway, the final countdown for my departure from Tulsa has begun. Tomorrow I will head back to Kentucky. A quarter of the sabbatical is behind me.
I have not completely separated from the church as was the plan. I have had four text messages from church folk today and I have responded to them because they concerned the health of people. It's so very difficult to separate. There is no doubt in my mind that's the good meat of a sabbatical, this forced separation. It repudiates co-dependence and fosters a mutual but not all-consuming journey. A little distance would be helpful to us all. And yet, I am still thinking about the church every hour. People. Illnesses. The elevator repair. The thoughts don't go away. In one sense that means that a portion of the sabbatical has been less than successful. This isn't supposed to be a vacation where we can stay in touch. It's supposed to be a separation for a while -- for a sabbath's rest. I have a ways to go to get there -- if I ever do.
I have started reading Silas House's novel, "Southernmost." It's going to be good for me. I have been listening to podcasts. I worshiped in an interesting place. Many things are going well. But, I have already begun to think in terms of the sabbatical ending. The countdown to the last day is already begun. I am trying to turn that around tonight, be present, be in the moment, breathe. And so there is this, with which I will leave you tonight.
To a Waterfowl
Whither, 'midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight, to do thee wrong,
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek’st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chaféd ocean side?
There is a Power, whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—
The desert and illimitable air
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end,
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o’er thy sheltered nest.
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form, yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must trace alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
Jerry
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