Just before Memorial Day I received an email in which the last line read, “Have a great holiday weekend.” Now normally that would have been a sentiment making a great deal of sense. Here was the unofficial start of summer when all you could think about was the line from Porgy and Bess, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…” But what happens when every day is like the Memorial Day weekend, every day is like Presidents’ Day weekend, like Labor Day, Thanksgiving, etc.?
We are losing our sense of time; days blend into each other. How many times I’ve asked, “What day is today?” And there’s little to distinguish one from another. I’ve begun to appreciate the concept of time because of this strange feeling. Something tells me you also are similarly discombobulated, or in the Queen’s English, fatutzelt.
In one of our Gates of Prayer selections praising God for creation, we read, “Day follows day in endless succession and the years vanish from our sight.” In thinking about this blending of days we’re experiencing now this sentence popped into my mind. Why? Because so often we don’t appreciate the opportunities each day affords us. We go at jet speed from one thing to another. Now we might have a routine we follow as we shelter in place, but we truly turn on the brakes as never before. How perfect a time to contemplate so many things.
Years ago, someone asked me why I stopped having the organist play background music during our silent prayer. I said, “Because it’s a silent prayer.” People aren’t comfortable with silence; even silence needs music, and when the silence was too long, I’d hear about that too. We’re just always ahead of ourselves. We cannot take time to stop, and when we stop, we need that next step to feel comfortable again. And it seems to have gotten worse as technology boomed.
But the never-experienced-before consequences of this never-experienced-before pandemic don’t permit us too many choices. We have to slow down. Time means something different, and there’s a measure of silence in that time. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out…along with all the other new normal things and how they play out. That prayerbook selection I mentioned ends with these words, “…and fill our days with abiding worth.” Again, as I wrote, how perfect a time to contemplate so many things.
(Speaking of silence, a youngster was saying bedtime prayers before he went to sleep. His mother said, “Sweetie, I can’t hear you,” and her son replied, “I wasn’t talking to you.”)