This morning when I woke to my children climbing on each other and me and complaining of each other’s intrusion into their personal space, I found myself very quickly feeling resentful and grumpy. It was my first day back at school – in person, not on a computer – for eight weeks and I wasContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: Present Perfect”
Tag Archives: time
Ordinary Wednesday: The New Ordinary?
It’s a curious thing, keeping ordinary time these last two years. In some respects everything is very ordinary. We don’t leave our homes very much; each day feels much like the previous one; we see the same people, the same walls, the same garden beds. Yet in other ways nothing is ordinary. We long forContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: The New Ordinary?”
Ordinary Wednesday: The slow work of God
Today my city came out of its fifth COVID-19 lockdown in two years. Time functions differently when you’re in lockdown, partly because you cannot do many of the things you’d normally do, and because weekdays and weekends bleed into each other, but also because we slow down and notice what we wouldn’t normally. I spendContinue reading “Ordinary Wednesday: The slow work of God”
Changeless
Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Collect for Compline, The Book of Common Prayer Full of contradiction, I am buoyedby the blossomContinue reading “Changeless”
Extraordinary Time
Deprived of the ordinary markings of days -drives to work, birthdays, people to celebrate -we clingmore fervently to organic signs,the constant shifts in the garden,which trees have blossomed,which ones have leaves,how tall the pea plant has grown,how white its petals.These and the aphids signal time:those and the snails migrating,the worms beneath the compost,the dead birdContinue reading “Extraordinary Time”
Toddler-speed
Only when we are going somewhere does he dawdle, suddenly eager to investigate every fencepost, every garden paver. When we’ve all the world’s time, he hurries, as though life might catch him before he is done, as one learns to do when small and only grown-ups can open doors for you, where moments must beContinue reading “Toddler-speed”
Glenroy Lent: Long Shrift
Suburb has its own time. Nestled just beneath city’s scheduled view, it sits when city runs. It holds deep memories and secrets, left in garages, holds hopes in council offices. Roadwork punctuates the day’s first lines. Promises in orange signs declare: something soon is happening. Prepare. You may have left your lunch behind, may haveContinue reading “Glenroy Lent: Long Shrift”
20 Contemplations #9: Logos
“…before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) Eternity enters the human timeframe. Before movement had matter, He was: No beginning or conclusion; the same Yesterday, today, before all days. Even the hands of clocks he moves, sustains; And now He enters: the watchmaker within The mechanism; the infinite contained. Time baffles at the sight; whereContinue reading “20 Contemplations #9: Logos”
No turning
I dreamt a ferryboat dream where, crossing some unknown stretch of deep, we struck another time and you were lost into the depths of There, and, Orpheus, I wandered far where loss and past commingled in faint glimpses of your head – behind only, never quite your face. And when re-united, by those turns thatContinue reading “No turning”
Northbound at dusk
Jeffrey Smart painted this dying day: burnt orange in floating smokestack steam, needle-lights stretching in fluorescent dream, the sojourn of light sinking in silent sway. Daytime paints its canopy away and minutes pass in inches as we glean each moment, weigh each instant gram by gram. Apologies buy flowers; much to say, yet time isContinue reading “Northbound at dusk”
The Consolations of Writing 