Every morning, Christopher and I go to his preschool. He runs up the steps and struggles to open the exterior door. (It really is very heavy.) He runs to the first interior door. (You'll note that the verb "run", as well as the verbs "bounce," "jump," "hop," and "bang" will be used quite frequently in juxtaposition with Christopher's name.) He opens that door, and then goes sprinting down the hallway. Every morning. And every morning I smile. It's precious.
This morning I smiled, but it was a little bittersweet. I knew that 15 years from now, as I was sending him off to college (or wherever he goes) I'll have a faint memory of this sweet time, and I'll miss it. I'll wonder where it went. I'll long for it and want it back--even, I'm guessing, while I won't want to give up those future years as well.
This entry isn't another meditation on staying in the moment, since it's the only moment that we have. Yes, one lesson from my recognition of the reality of time and change is that I need to treasure each moment with Christopher, because none of them will last forever.
No, this entry is a reflection on my desire to keep time--to possess it and not let it go. I don't want to just experience that moment with Christopher in the hall. I want to freeze it and lock it away as mine forever. I don't just want to experience the moment in the moment--I want to stay in the moment, even as I want all of the other moments, past and future. I want to keep time--to own time. And I know that it's futile.
How should I respond to the futility? I have a number of thoughts. An obvious one is to acknowledge it and learn to let go as a response. If I know I can't hold on to the moment, then at least I can alleviate the desperation of clutching after it as it escapes. Acknowledging futility gives evidence of a bit of wisdom. It even opens the way to self-knowledge. It opens me to the humility of recognizing that I don't own time. That's what it is to be human. Ultimately, we rent, we don't own.
A second thought is to let go of ownership so that I can just be present to the moment. (Okay, so maybe this is just another entry on staying in the moment, but it's different from the last one.) There was nothing bittersweet in my time with Christopher. The bitter only came with my desire to possess and the frustration of that desire. Let go of the desire and just stay with Christopher!
But there's the third impulse--the mystical/spiritual impulse. It's what I'll call a recognition of the flow---of the divine life that was/is there in that moment. I'll talk about that flow elsewhere--it demands multiple blogs of its own. But the divine--God--is present in all of these moments--and God holds all of these moments within. God does own them, if you will. And God can own me--does own me. If I can be present to God in the midst of my presence to each moment, then I can maintain my presence to them even in the midst of their passing. God is God of the living, Jesus tells us. If God is the God of that moment with Christopher, then that moment lives in God and it is alive to me as I learn to live in God.
I can't keep time, but God can, and God can keep me. Now if I can just learn to be kept.
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