I suppose it isn’t surprising that I become even further aware of this pervading concept called “time” when I’m staying with Jessica Riehl. I’m with her, Kevin Hiebert, and Sara Rosenau in Portland, Oregon, preparing to host three days of Art of Hosting for 50 people. It was 4-5 years ago that I met Jessica, who was very interested in relationship to time. She was a grad student working on thesis. We later created some exercises together to pull people into an awareness of time, to some consciousness. Not so much time management. Rather, awareness, awakeness, and presence.
The picture above is looking into Jessica’s neighborhood from the guest room in which I wake this morning. I love the trees in this neighborhood, including some incredible old, giant cedars. I love the flowers. Roses grow tremendously here. The skies are cloudy this morning, with some further sun coming in the day and week.
In waking, and journaling, I found these words about time writing through me onto the page.
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Time Bending
Days are ticking by, relentlessly,
as if quickened,
and bending toward more and more fast passings.
It is June 4th.
Where did May go?
Or April?
Or the first half of the year?
In my mind, it could well be the first month of the year.
Yet the calendar proclaims to me the approach of half way.
I want to bend time.
Perhaps, to slow it down.
Perhaps, just because I can,
and because this is what time has been teaching me.
I don’t want more days of living outside of myself,
conforming to the rush.
I don’t want more days of scrambling for a score, or validation,
through systems pervasive yet unnatural.
I want more days of arriving.
To this place, and this time, with welcome.