Time Goes Away

"I am afraid to speak or move for fear that this wonderful beauty will vanish like a broken silence." - L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

The winds have been changing this week. Not a lot, but just enough to notice. The thick flush of summer is fading like the dye from my once bright teal shorts and the sun is starting to bow behind tree lines 20 minutes earlier. It's subtle but it makes me sad.  It makes me want to hold onto time like a kid grasping a rope swing for dear life. It’s like that feeling you have when you’ve been laughing for 8 minutes straight--you’re crying, and convulsing with joy while all the anxiety, fear and insecurity evaporates or that feeling you have when someone truly sees, accepts and loves you without condition... you just don’t want it to end.

I want to stop time and rest in these sacred space forever, but time goes away. Sooner or later fall comes and the laughter eventually stops. You get off the floor, take a couple deep breaths and straighten out your jeans T shirt. The overwhelming affirmation eventually collides with the phone ringing, the laundry machine beeping, and stacks of dirty dishes growing taller. Everyone sinks back down into the “reality” of composure and social norms and agendas and responsibility. Blah. Who wants that to be their reality? Maybe I’ve been identifying with the wrong "reality"... but then why does the really sweet, pure and beautiful reality come and go so quickly?  Sometimes I feel afraid to absorb a moment's beauty and goodness because I know that I can’t hold onto it forever... it just hurts and cuts so deep when things change and a sacred silence is broken.

This is something I haven't been able to put into words until this week. I was soaking in the tub on Monday night with a miserable headache when a Rosie Thomas songs came on and gave the vague, pervasive feeling a name: time going away. It's well worth a listen:
http://grooveshark.com/s/Time+Goes+Away+Album+Version/4kBUU3?src=5

This vague, unnamed feeling that makes our eyes misty and our hearts sad and always seems to come up when "time goes away" is yearning. It's a yearning for the fullness of love, not just romantic love but the sincere love of family and friendship. It's a yearning for true and unadulterated connection. A yearning for the fullness of beauty, joy, peace, and goodness... it's a yearning for a higher reality, an unnamed space and Love whose fullness can't be articulated.  C.S. Lewis explains this phenomenon in The Weight of Glory:

“In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter... The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

And maybe that's what the last weeks of summer are... the sweet and drifting aromas of a sacred flower we've never held but strangely hunger and thirst for all the same. Maybe that's the response that truth and beauty awaken in the human heart--a gut-wrenching awareness that there must be more. We can't even name the more but we sense it's presence and know it's fragrance: "It was when I was happiest that I longed the most... The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing... to find the place where all the beauty came from" (C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces).

I know the Source of the longing.  I've seen glimpses of His face in the eyes of children and an old blind man with a guide dog. I've heard His voice in the shower and on long drives.  I've felt His presence in my dreams and on the beaches of the Pacific.  I could list out Bible verses and theological principles that explain who He is and how He fulfills the longing but I'm not going to do that. I'm weary of wearing a mask and pretending that I believe all that stuff in my heart. I don't have it all together. And what bothers me most is when people list verses and principles as a means to convince me that I shouldn't feel the longing: "just trust God," "have faith," "rest in the promise," and "don't be discouraged." Throwing around truths in that manner significantly cheapens them. In fact, their prescription implicitly communicates: "You feel the yearning? Still? You must be doing something wrong. You shouldn't feel longing anymore. Just do x, y and z and the yearning will disappear." And that simply isn't true. The aching for more is supposed to be there. 

The yearning is part of what makes us human and keeps us trailblazing forward. The sadness and disappointment of a moment lost and time "going away" is what draws us out of our technological bubbles and materialistic caves and sets our hearts on pilgrimage. It's what makes us aware of the human's need to encounter the supernatural. Matthew 5 says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." I think "the longing" is synonymous to that poorness of spirit. It's a desperation that drives grown men and women to their knees and into prayers marked with heaving tears and shouts. It is the desperation that births cries for revival and restoration and redemption. When ignited, this yearning opens the flood gates of heaven and raises up an army of radical warriors who will willingly lay down any and everything, all for the hope of being in the presence of the yearning's Source for eternity.

So, the yearning is real. The yearning is real and shouldn't be stuffed, ignored and denied. Quiet walks through the woods, long soaks in the tub, wild tears and crazy brush strokes are moments worth investing in because they help us experience, embrace, and name the yearning for what it is.

 

Another thing that helps me embrace the yearning is food. Yes, this is somewhat trite, but also very true. On days when seasons change and deep things shift, hearty soul food is a necessity. Thick breads, soups, and pasta dishes makes me slow down and reflect. This week, my soul food was slow cooker chili with dense short grain brown rice and homemade sweet potato fries with rosemary.  

I got the chili recipe off yummly.com and changed a few things (here's the link http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Slow-Cooker-Chili-Ii-Allrecipes). 1) I didn't use the bean "liquid" because bean juice grosses me out. Instead I drained all the beans and added a cup and a half of chicken broth. 2) I switched a can of kidney beans for a can of black beans. 3) I renamed the chili from "Slow Cooker Chili" to "Cowboy Chili" because sojourning days require sojourning food descriptions :)

As for the sweet potato fries, it's a mixture of a friend's recipe and my own reckoning:

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2) Cut a sweet potato or yam into fries.
3) Melt 2 tbs of coconut oil on the stove and then pour over fries and mix thoroughly in a bowl.
4) Place fries on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with sea salt and rosemary.
5) Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes.

Enjoy good food, take time to do what brings you life, and don't feel ashamed or isolated from the world when "time goes away" and your heart feels sad.  It's okay to feel the yearning--light a candle, draw a bath, let the tears come and embrace it.