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It occurs to me this morning that how one uses one's Time during Times like this signifies - - no wait, back up, not during Times LIKE this but during THIS Time, which is specifically Singular, Unique, Only, Unknown and, Unexpected, is Uncharted at this stage of Life, especially if one suddenly realizes that one has been oblivious of the fact, signifies greatly: wake up, bonehead, how are you using your Time? Is it Wise Investment or General Use - - or the Waste that is such a shame when indeed "Life is short, and we haven't much Time ... "?
This is personal of course to each one of us, we meet them in the elevators and ask "Are you here on vacation, are you tourists?" and the unvaried response "No, we're from Panama City, we're refugees from The Hurricane, how about you?" And in my case in this Unplanned Time that any other Time would/could be a bit of heaven seventeen stories high on the Florida Gulf Coast looking in one direction out over the ever-changing sometimes tranquil, sometimes elegant turquoise blues and greens, sometimes moody, sometimes gray, sometimes furious bloody vicious Gulf of Mexico, sometimes lapping peacefully ashore below; and in the other direction out over the geographically thin community of PCB and further on across West Bay to land beyond, appears to Signify something about State of Mind. And so I'm stepping back a moment to reflect on myself, my own use of this Time that no longer carries a sense of being mine.
How am I, how have I been, "using" it, this Time? Because I've become a semi-alert ever sentinel instead of a thinking person. "My" Time is sit listening for, or stand at a counter with view of, the guarded door to open and Loved One to escape alone and get lost and can't be found; with my laptop, playing Solitaire. Klondike Solitaire because it can be done mindlessly.
Using a computer, one must play by the rules, one cannot cheat; one can cheat with a deck of cards, but when the software deals out the tableau and one has a go at completing the foundation to "win" the game, one is bound to the rules. Before computers, I never cheated with a deck of cards anyway, my mother taught me to play Solitaire while I was home from school at age seven during one of my two-week bouts in second grade at Cove School, either measles or chicken pox or mumps, taught me the rules, and there's total lack of satisfaction if one cheats anyway, it's the challenge of risk and probability that makes the game "worthwhile" at all as a way to pass Time, especially when one is seven, or a teenager, and it never occurs to one that Life is Short. But now when I'm an age to be acutely aware that Life is short and we haven't much time! and here I am playing Solitaire that only requires half a wit while the other half wit stands Sentinel.
It's okay, because Love is the reason, as any doting parent who has ever had a sick child understands. Otherwise, because it so easily slips the mind, I'd be refreshing my Hebrew, which, perhaps because the symbols are so different, is more intriguing than NT Greek. But doing that refreshing, studying, one's mind wanders off into the forest to hear and see nothing else, which for a sentinel, in wartime, to get caught asleep or inattentive is to be taken out and shot.
And this is wartime, isn't it, and that inestimably exacerbated by Michael Hurricane.
My metaphor for Theological Reflection. In the trenches, muddy, filthy, drizzling rain, crawling with bold rats, but reasonably safe behind the barbed wire; suddenly a loud noise, as a new enemy, one never faced before, a tank, comes rolling slowly out of the mist and over the tumble of barbed wire.
What comes to mind - -> state of mind - - signifies - - total mind conquering exhaustion. Study. Walk on the Beach. Read. Write. Rithmatic. Bending, Stretching, Numbing. Semi-alert Sentinel and Solitaire.
T
This is personal of course to each one of us, we meet them in the elevators and ask "Are you here on vacation, are you tourists?" and the unvaried response "No, we're from Panama City, we're refugees from The Hurricane, how about you?" And in my case in this Unplanned Time that any other Time would/could be a bit of heaven seventeen stories high on the Florida Gulf Coast looking in one direction out over the ever-changing sometimes tranquil, sometimes elegant turquoise blues and greens, sometimes moody, sometimes gray, sometimes furious bloody vicious Gulf of Mexico, sometimes lapping peacefully ashore below; and in the other direction out over the geographically thin community of PCB and further on across West Bay to land beyond, appears to Signify something about State of Mind. And so I'm stepping back a moment to reflect on myself, my own use of this Time that no longer carries a sense of being mine.
How am I, how have I been, "using" it, this Time? Because I've become a semi-alert ever sentinel instead of a thinking person. "My" Time is sit listening for, or stand at a counter with view of, the guarded door to open and Loved One to escape alone and get lost and can't be found; with my laptop, playing Solitaire. Klondike Solitaire because it can be done mindlessly.
Using a computer, one must play by the rules, one cannot cheat; one can cheat with a deck of cards, but when the software deals out the tableau and one has a go at completing the foundation to "win" the game, one is bound to the rules. Before computers, I never cheated with a deck of cards anyway, my mother taught me to play Solitaire while I was home from school at age seven during one of my two-week bouts in second grade at Cove School, either measles or chicken pox or mumps, taught me the rules, and there's total lack of satisfaction if one cheats anyway, it's the challenge of risk and probability that makes the game "worthwhile" at all as a way to pass Time, especially when one is seven, or a teenager, and it never occurs to one that Life is Short. But now when I'm an age to be acutely aware that Life is short and we haven't much time! and here I am playing Solitaire that only requires half a wit while the other half wit stands Sentinel.
It's okay, because Love is the reason, as any doting parent who has ever had a sick child understands. Otherwise, because it so easily slips the mind, I'd be refreshing my Hebrew, which, perhaps because the symbols are so different, is more intriguing than NT Greek. But doing that refreshing, studying, one's mind wanders off into the forest to hear and see nothing else, which for a sentinel, in wartime, to get caught asleep or inattentive is to be taken out and shot.
And this is wartime, isn't it, and that inestimably exacerbated by Michael Hurricane.
My metaphor for Theological Reflection. In the trenches, muddy, filthy, drizzling rain, crawling with bold rats, but reasonably safe behind the barbed wire; suddenly a loud noise, as a new enemy, one never faced before, a tank, comes rolling slowly out of the mist and over the tumble of barbed wire.
What comes to mind - -> state of mind - - signifies - - total mind conquering exhaustion. Study. Walk on the Beach. Read. Write. Rithmatic. Bending, Stretching, Numbing. Semi-alert Sentinel and Solitaire.
T