A Day Out of Time

This day. Full. I watch the blessing spill over and can’t catch it all. A bit frustrated, I wonder if I should try harder. How? So I write.

Less than 24 hours ago we were all preparing for a major hurricane to hit our islands. We stacked our gallons of water and canned beans, dismantled the trampoline and took house photos for future insurance claims. Schools were closed and many grocery store shelves were emptied.

Eerily apocalyptic. But last evening, by the intervention of the “high shear winds”, as the weather people called them, the force of this dark system was suddenly dissolved even as it approached. Ah! Tell me there’s not a metaphysical truth involved. I envision the protective intervention of angels directed to our petitioned defense. But even without a gloriously mysterious narrative, I feel the sigh of relief. Now our whole community is living in what feels like the “day after Thanksgiving” but without the stress of shopping, of distracting and insistent options. Like a day taken out of time, a holy interruption of Chronos. Ironically, impending destruction makes us all hold our breath. And the consequent deep sigh of relief is fodder for better focus. For breathing slower. 


So maybe the days of uncertain dread made the needed space for This Day. Yeah, we will try to stitch the exposed swings of love and life-threatening uncertainty back into a rational human confidence for tomorrow, to head back to work and the early morning school drive. But instead, Lord, make this timeless moment stay. 

Such an unexpectedly savorable morning in our house. Pancakes, coffee, my daughter vacuuming her carpet, my son pulling us in to watch Youtubers in an amateur boxing match. The sunlight on my daughter’s pine floor reaches mellowly now across the hallway, spreading an even tempered hand toward my butterfly chair where I'm reading. A cup of Good Earth green tea waits on my footstool, the mug scripted with “Wisdom is sweet to your soul.”

I have been slowly discovering Audrey Assad the last few years. Today, after the storm, I finally downloaded two of her first albums, and it is sweet wisdom, smart and clear, filling the room, like the gentle wind bringing life from hundreds of miles away, now here, cooling me through the jalousies. What else have I been putting off? What music have I been missing?

My son lit the candle in my room though it's still only 10:30 in the morning, and like that playful, dangerous flame, the words jump up and dance from the used book page, acrobatting over my heart. Audrey in my ears, and Julian in my eyes. Both real, raw, luringly expansive and authentically detailed. Too good. 

Yes, Julian of Norwich. Still anonymously known by the church where she was an anchoress, she wrote in the 14th century, insights and experiences that feel more live to me than most anything I have heard in my lifetime. She lovingly describes timeless things I intuitively know yet hunger to learn. Today, I took the time to listen to her and was rewarded. 

This devout woman knew the God I both know and don’t know. At her words, my spirit leaps with recognition, like John in Elizabeth’s womb when he hears the voice of pregnant Mary. I imagine I feel what that infant-in-construction, prophet-in-formation felt. Jesus is near, Jesus is coming. Know the Word who will give all meaning to all your yet unpronounced words, who makes noise intelligible.  Then all that still-partial John could do, he did: he wiggled!  Well, Elizabeth said he "leapt" in her womb, but really, to where could a womb-bound child leap. It was a wiggle. A movement, mustered with all the cells he had to date.

I love that. Simple. Yet everything. Like Mary, Julian lovingly bears Jesus in her writings, the Lord still being formed, so to speak, within her.  So at her words, my still inarticulate spirit wakes up, surprised and delighted. How will I respond?

In this day's breadth of goodness, from the faithful wag of my dog’s tail to the divine fire glancing off my feeble mind, I sigh at my incapacity. I am freshly sensitized to the blessings but painfully aware of my lack of usable volume. I feel the sweetwater rush over me and float away with the nonchalant currents of gravity and time.  Life is all around and leaving me at once. I feel helpless, unable to catch more than my plastic measuring cupful. Should I worry? Will it come back to me? Not likely. God is generous, but original. Life comes back around but never the same way twice. I have to watch it go.  But not until, I like John, manage a wiggle. Make a leap with my few cells. 

I can write to wiggle back in the direction of Love. Toward the One who blows away hurricanes. The One who gives me music. Who grows my babies into mysterious and hilarious teens. I wiggle and write to collect the water I cannot hold, and keep it as a pool for our healing, day after chronos day.


This weird week makes me think how we organize our meaning, plowing through these days of chaos and relief, like driving past rows of expected residential blocks on the way home. But sometimes we get a day that is more. Maybe in the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane or a deathly faith struggle. An unmapped space that suddenly opens and goes on and on, reminding us of who we are and what we really want in life. So familiar and yet unexplored. I wish us more such days out of time.