SP ti AC me E

I can recall a lot of my early life because I moved from place to place. The trash cans floating down the street after a flood were in Mississippi, so I was three years old (1967). Christmas with my grandparents was right before I turned four, during the weeks between Mississippi and Hawaii (also 1967). I was four when I used to see Mr. Yokoyama (1968) walk to work – that was in Hawaii. Stopping at a Texas rest stop to have a drink of water happened when I was barely five (Winter 1969)- it was during the drive across country on the move back to the mainland. Where I was and when I was are easier to determine because the wheres changed every year and a half.

sp TI ac ME e

But there were some years when too many moves in too short a time blur together. My sister and I were in three different school systems in three different states one year – and ended it in a return to one of them to finish the school term. I lived in four different places in two states between my first and second semesters in seminary. Few of the details from those times are solid enough to grasp, and all that remains is a cloudiness that hangs between two more distinct times and spaces.

StPiAmCeE

Space and time are intertwined, sometimes offering clarity and sometimes made more obscure because of that entanglement. Sometimes this melding anchors my life, sometimes it unmoors it. Either way, it reveals just how profound spacetime is in life.

There’s a lesson here, if I care to learn it. This life grows in particular space and time. The walls and roof that keep me warm, the chairs drawn up to the table for a meal, and the spot I occupy when I pray are where I seek God, and where God meets me. The ordinary time that finds me at work, making dinner, or gathering myself for prayer before anyone else is awake is when I encounter neighbor, self, and God. It makes it a lot easier to let go of the illusion that none of the particulars really matter; it also makes it a whole lot easier to love those particulars, imperfect and ultimately transitory as they may be…

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