Time

Carmen and I went to the little desert town of Edgewood Sunday. The tiny congregation there meets in a yarn shop owned by one of the members. It's a satellite congregation of the Albuquerque church, and they usually just watch the sermons from First Church on DVD and discuss them. This week they got a live in person intern. Nine people were there to hear it, including me.

The title of the sermon was "A Fulcrum of Time." The crux of the message, for me anyway, was that we must change time into life. It started out with a comment on our times here and now, including the fact that her husband has been unemployed for five months. That's me! She quoted William Ellery Channing, Henry David Thoreau and others who advocated self-culture, improving ourselves for the ultimate improvement of the world.

The congregation passed around a "talking stick," and when it was passed to her unemployed husband, I went on at some length about the wonderful things I've been able to do with my windfall of time- and I didn't even mention my ongoing Scrabble games on Facebook or my ability to watch The Price Is Right.

Three things are paramount: I'm volunteering in a real theatre for the first time since the 80s, I'm writing more than I have ever written in my life, and I'm walking more than I have since I left Vero Beach in 1987. All of this is a treasure for me. I'll be glad to finally get a paying job again, but I'll always look back on this time as a precious gift. Sure, I've been sadly neglecting my blogging lately, but the scenic work I'm doing is just as important to me. And when I finally get to see my work as part of a highly entertaining show, it will be a watershed moment, comparable to seeing my news sets on TV.

Walking has always been a spiritual practice for me, time away from everything that distracts my train of thought. I went to the bank and the grocery store this afternoon. A forty minute walk to the bank, ten minutes to the store and thirty five minutes back home. An hour and a half on the road, off the leash. It was wonderful. Of course nowadays, my cell phone leash is with me, but it never rang.

But now, Remus tells me, it's time to feed kitties. And this time it really is time.