lenten journal: a simple grain of sand

Last night at youth fellowship we played board games.

We keep a big box in the closet with Boggle, Risk, Uno, Word Up, Scrabble, Mankala, and several others I can’t remember right now. From time to time I pull them out and we spend our evening playing games and talking together. I was in the group that decided to play Boggle, which is a game where you try to make words out of the letters in the cube. You credit for the words only you alone identify. We had a good time.

Inside the Boggle box is a small hourglass (minuteglass?) to time how long we look for words. I am fascinated by them: their shape, their purpose, their functionality, and their symbolism. Here’s how time passes, one moment after another.

When I checked email this morning, I had a message from a dear friend that his father had had a heart attack and is in critical condition. We have been friends for almost twenty-five years, sharing all kinds of experiences together. We have not walked this road before. As I thought about him, an evening emerged from the sands of my memory of he and I at a David Wilcox concert at the Cactus Cafe in Austin. The opening act was a guy named LJ Booth. It was the only time I’ve ever heard him. What came back to me this morning is the song he sang: “Big Hourglass.”

I remember back in college
It was sometime in the fall
I was walking by a Maple tree
Flaming red and tall

And as I passed beneath it
One leaf out of that flame
Fell right into my breast pocket
And I haven't been the same

It was like the whole world
Was a big hourglass
Top is like the future, bottom like the past
And at that narrow middle part
Where only one grain can pass
Is the ever-living moment
And I want to understand
That simple grain of sand

It was somewhere in Nebraska
We'd been driving quite awhile
When I glanced over at my daughter
She had this very special smile

It had this extra little wrinkle
Like my grandma's used to do
And for a moment it was real hard
To tell the difference 'tween the two

It was like my family
Was a big hourglass
My daughter, like the future
Grandma, like the past
And at that little moment
Where only one smile can pass
The two were joined together
And I want to understand
This simple grain of sand

Spring is coming on here
There's moisture in the breeze
The river is running higher
Buds are popping in the trees

So I picked up my guitar today
I didn't really have a plan
And this song just kind of jumped right out
Buds were popping in my hands

And it's like the whole world
Is a big hourglass
Top is like the future, bottom like the past
And at that narrow middle part
Where only one grain can pass
Is the ever-living moment
And I want to understand
That simple grain of sand

Like my daughters's smile
Like that Maple leaf
I will give to you this moment
Because it's my belief
That the middle of the hourglass
Is this place where I now stand
So I'll do my best to sing
And try to understand
This simple grain of sand

How we articulate time is a continuing quest for me. Deeply moved by Alan Lightman’s novel, Einstein’s Dreams, and Madeleine L’Engle’s musing on time, I wrote a short story called "Waiting Room" about a guy who, knowing something was severely wrong, was waiting for test results from his doctor. I described his thinking this way:

Time stands on its head like a circus clown. We do not move forward, only up and down. We are every age we have ever been or will be in any and every moment, as if the moments of our lives happen simultaneously, though we experience them one by one.

I am fourteen at my brother's military funeral;
I am seven putting a tooth under my pillow;
I am twenty-eight and my son has survived the surgery;
I am sixteen pulling out of the driveway for the first time;
I am fifty-four holding my first grandchild;
I am thirty stretching to touch a name on the Wall;
I am nine going to the principal's office for cutting off Sally Jeffrey's pigtail;
I am twenty-five laying down next to my wife for the first night in our first home;
I am seventy-two being pushed down a colorless hall to a semiprivate room;
I am eighteen registering for the draft;
I am forty-five coming home with my Christmas bonus;
I am sixty-one at my wife's funeral;
I am thirty-seven waiting to hear the results of my brain scan.

The mystery of a friendship is in how two people find a way to stand in the waist of each other’s hourglass. Somehow love makes it possible to ride that simple grain of sand together. It doesn’t happen in every moment. He and I have been pulled very different directions over the past couple of years. We have stayed in touch, but we have not been able to keep up on the details as we once did. That sand has already passed by. Today I’m working to be in his moment, to be by his side, even though I’m a couple thousand miles away. My friend’s father may be dying. What is more important than that right now?

I feel the full force of our friendship as it stacks up on today. Years ago I wrote a song that said:

when the snow falls on your roof and my world gets colder
when you know without any proof that you have my shoulder
when the fear of pain come to break us
it’s the years of strain that will make us
friends at last – friends at last

“We have friends,” says Martin Marty, “or we are friends, in order that we do not get killed.” One day, the last grain of sand will pass through the middle of my friend’s hourglass or mine, and we will no longer be able to stand in the moment together. For today we will stand together and try to understand this simple grain of sand.

Peace,
Milton