Category Archives: time

in the mean time

I believe in the resurrection. It is the only reason I have such outlandish hope. The language itself tells the meaning: re- (again) + surgere (to rise). We sit today considering this, again. For recently we ‘lost’ to this life a baby who had a name and a very specific body. She looked so much like her mother, our daughter. Her very DNA was a unique weaving. Her toes, like all of her body were perfect and recognizable. Re- (again) + cognizable (to know from previous knowing). Her weight was significantly heavy, weighty, and substantive. Holding her felt like a beginning, not an end, though it was an end in time. It was a beginning too, for her weight held a tangible hope: that such a unique weaving was not made for loss alone, never to be further enjoyed; that her body was precious and held an equally precious soul. We knew her in the few hours we had. There was a knowing there that was sure, that nothing, even death can take away. Death is a thief, an enemy, a terribly mean robber. Death halts creation. But death does not have the last word.

In this mean time also there was once a down payment made, a rescue, a first fruits resurrection of an incorruptible life, a ransom made for my life and for hers. Jesus promised He would do this and then come again. He is the great re-maker. He is the only re-storer. He does not clean the slate and start over with better stuff; he takes what was damaged and makes it new again. This is why he is my champion. He is the creator. He is the re-creator. He was the first word, He is the last word, He came into mean time. He now has transcended it. There is not another like Him. He purchased my hope with His own blood. The very substance of it all is a sure sign of what is to come.

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Hope, with strings attached

We’re living in a time now where the word Hope is hot. It was the theme of a political campaign that won a young man the Presidency. Now he sits precariously as the harbinger of hope. I pray for him with all my heart. I pray to the only One who gives me hope.

Hope is like a helium balloon, it is lighter than air and all too quickly can disappear, even as the Greeks feared that hope’s companion is that inevitable foe: Delusion. Hope must be tied to something to really be able to stick around, to have any verity of reference, any true sustainability. So, one of the strings that holds my balloon is grounded to the true Giver of hope. The other tie (and I’m not sure yet if there are any other strings, but these two are enough for me) is time: Time is the context for hope to have any meaning at all as a word and as a concept. I hope because I live in time and my present time causes me to hunger with hope. Hope is a real thing because I am in the not-yet time of what hope looks to. Anticipation is sweet if it is grounded in something real that I am beginning to taste and understand.  The string I hold leads me to the sight of that lofty balloon. There is something there and I can almost touch it, I am munching on an hors d’oeuvre and that is why I can hope. The compound word in French literally means “outside, the main work”. Hors d’oeuvres sustain the guests until the meal, the “real work” arrives; and these hors d’oeuvres are said to increase my appetite. These are concepts that only make sense if there is such a thing as time. Time’s stretching out and its restless, yearning ambiguity are context for true hope. Because of time, I can learn and experience hope. Without time, hope makes no sense and is meaningless.

Here is a rich quote about time from a book I am presently enjoying:

“Childhood’s time is Adam and Eve’s time before they left the garden for good and from that time on divided everything into before and after. It is the time before God told them that the day would come when they would surely die with the result that from that point on they made clocks and calendars for counting their time out like money  and never again lived through a day of their lives without being haunted somewhere in the depths of them by the knowledge that each day brought them closer to the end of their lives.”                   Frederick Buechner The Sacred Journey, p.10

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Past Present Future

Welcome to my new webpage. And thanks to my daughter Betsy, who understands computer meta codes, and put all this in place so beautifully for me. I plan to use this blogsite to record musings that relate to the visual work I do, and will do.

I had a dream last night, and in it I was finally weeping. My husband, oldest daughter and one of her childhood friends and I were cleaning up after a party in our old neighborhood. I was folding the table cloth together when it all hit me. Years of hard and earnest work were coming to an end. All there was to show, it seemed, were crumbs on the floor.

I am reminded as I ponder this now of a story that always moved me deeply. Jesus, after feeding thousands, asked his disciples to go and pick up the leftovers. And, it is recorded for us in all four gospel accounts, as if this accounting is important, that there were 12 baskets, each full of broken pieces. Why did Jesus instruct them to gather the fragments, what was there in this for them? I remember thinking once, while living in that neighborhood, that the greater miracle would be if each soul had been fully satisfied just as the last piece of bread and fish had been consumed. Why are there fragments? Why is there a mess on the ground? And why do they need to gather it? And why does it fill 12 baskets?

It seems to me in this telling that the event is not just about the present tense feeding to assuage physical hunger. They were definitely hungry- these crowds of people;  Jesus felt compassion for them, and acted. But there was more He was doing there, and the disciples would not understand it until later. This story for me has held an aching wonder. Those piles of broken pieces, of leftovers, filled a very specific number of baskets. There is a symbol of future completion in this that superintends the present mess on the ground.  He knows what He’s doing, even in things that look to me as very undone, even wasted. My work is about this wonder in the midst of brokenness. I can hardly, in fact, I cannot explain in words the deep hope that rises up in my own soul when I am fed, and my heart is again lifted to believe from this broken ground. It is a hope that is rooted in accomplished work in the past, that carries me in the present, and that will be fully realized even later still.

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