lenten journal: a simple grain of sand

Last night at youth fellowship we played board games.

We keep a big box in the closet with Boggle, Risk, Uno, Word Up, Scrabble, Mankala, and several oth

ers I can’t remember right now. From time to time I pull them out and we spend our evening playing games and talking together. I was in the group that decided to play Boggle, which is a game where you try to make words out of the letters in the cube. You credit for the words only you alone identify. We had a good time.

Inside the Boggle box is a small hourglass (minuteglass?) to time how long we look for words. I am fascinated by them: their shape, their purpose, their functionality, and their symbolism. Here’s how time passes, one moment after another.

When I checked email this morning, I had a message from a dear friend that his father had had a heart attack and is in critical condition. We have been friends for almost twenty-five years, sharing all kinds of experiences together. We have not walked this road before. As I thought about him, an evening emerged from the sands of my memory of he and I at a David Wilcox concert at the Cactus Cafe in Austin. The opening act was a guy named LJ Booth. It was the only time I’ve ever heard him. What came back to me this morning is the song he sang: “Big Hourglass.”

How we articulate time is a continuing quest for me. Deeply moved by Alan Lightman’s novel,

, and Madeleine L’Engle’s musing on time, I wrote a short story called "Waiting Room" about a guy who, knowing something was severely wrong, was waiting for test results from his doctor. I described his thinking this way:

The mystery of a friendship is in how two people find a way to stand in the waist of each other’s hourglass. Somehow love makes it possible to ride that simple grain of sand together. It doesn’t happen in every moment. He and I have been pulled very different directions over the past couple of years. We have stayed in touch, but we have not been able to keep up on the details as we once did. That sand has already passed by. Today I’m working to be in his moment, to be by his side, even though I’m a couple thousand miles away. My friend’s father may be dying. What is more important than that right now?

I feel the full force of our friendship as it stacks up on today. Years  ago I wrote a song that said:

“We have friends,” says Martin Marty, “or we are friends, in order that we do not get killed.” One day, the last grain of sand will pass through the middle of my friend’s hourglass or mine, and we will no longer be able to stand in the moment together. For today we will stand together and try to understand this simple grain of sand.

Peace,
Milton