time and again

"What's on your mind?" asks Facebook when I log on. Time, time is on my mind. When I was somewhere, high school or college, I don't remember, something was the topic, I do not recall what, maybe it was essay lengths, the teacher quoted someone saying "if I'd had more time I'd have written a shorter letter". Even if I've not practiced it, more often running off at the pen (or the keyboard), it's a wise proverb, Less is More: last evening's sunset; there were hardly any clouds but I got a wide-scope, quite ordinary. But I cropped it down for less, to just the color and ithe skyline across the Bay, and it turned out more.

When you get to this age you find that even though Time is not on your side, Time is on your mind more than when you were forty-one or seventeen. Seventeen is my favorite age, and now that I'm eighty-six I'm finding out that eighty-six really is just as old as I thought it was when I was seventeen. In fact, when I was seventeen I didn't know anyone this old, not even my grandfather Weller. Maybe his one living older brother Charles, or maybe his one living sister Hallie, but I think not, either they were younger than this, or they didn't live to this age anyway. So, no.

It isn't that one dwells on Time, but one definitely is aware of Time. This time, next time? Stoppage time? In 2010 and 2011, those to whom I had given control of my Time added more to my game, which I called Plus Time, and my Blog, +Time. plusmoretime.blogspot.com. May soon have had eleven years of +Time. Eleven years on January 24, 2022, my sister's birthday.

What can happen? Anything, life itself. a car crash, the unexpected of not waking up, or waking up in oblivion. "To sleep, perchance to dream" though anyone who's had the deepest sedation of general anesthesia has been to that void outside of Time that's beyond dreaming, time lost, time that did not happen for you, Time in which you did not exist except in the minds of those waiting. To die, to sleep, but not to dream: peace, no worries.

That, beyond Time, is death as I understand St Paul's "having fallen asleep in Jesus", which goes until the trumpet sounds for the general resurrection at the End of Days. But we don't like that Time delay, so we fashion a more appealing eschatology out of "Today you will be with me in paradise". What do I believe about all this? Doesn't matter what I believe, as no amount of belief makes anything a fact. What matters is what you believe.

Though it's well to mind that to believe and to know are not the same, belief is not knowledge. Faith is not knowledge, faith, Hebrews 11:1, is the substance of things hoped for, confidence in things not seen.

What sustains hope and confidence? In the Christian realm, giving credence to the testimony of ancients, accepting the witness of Paul and the gospel writers in one's search for truth, accepting the traditions, theologies and doctrines of a church or other group, may be to find the hope and confidence of faith.

What do I believe? The vows of Baptism, if you know the covenant: I renounce Satan, I believe, I believe, I believe. I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. My faith includes license to doubt and to seek. In his sermon yesterday morning, our preacher pointed out that the lectionary framers left off the end of the gospel story. When Jesus says “I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me,” Pilate asks, "What is truth?"

A worthy exchange, and to seek truth includes asking whether that conversation is historical or is from the mind of the gospel writer. But a timeless conversation regardless, and its question "What is truth?" Again and always, "Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will." It comes from many sources, and I've found the seeking very costly indeed. But in seeking truth, I'll take disillusion over illusion.

What do I believe? Still seeking. Still in +Time. Still in my pilgrimage and walking as yet by faith.