“To take a minute and make it a moment is a holy thing,” Fr. Bill Ortt said in a sermon at Christ Church Easton earlier this month. It’s a message he’s been working to get across for a good part of the year. Minutes pass endlessly, but how many of them become moments for us? How many feel like time stops or alters and they become touchstone experiences, ingrained memories, part of our DNA.
I’ve been reading Tim Kreider‘s book of essays, “We Learn Nothing.” In the incredible essay, “The Czar’s Daughter,” he talks about the life, stories, death, and memories of a friend they called Skelly. Kreider remembers he and Skelly driving to the author’s cabin after a blizzard, where a grove of bamboo had bent under the weight of the snow, forming an archway.
“We walked down through that icy arcade tugging on each bamboo tree until we’d shaken loose enough weight that it would spring back up into the air, flinging its load of snow glittering fifty feet in the sky. It was so beautiful, and so much fun, that we both got giddy, laughing like kids on a snow day. Only he and I were there in that moment; now he’s gone. If you do not know someone by sharing such a memory, then you cannot ever know anyone at all. If that moment was not true, then nothing is.”
That’s a moment. I know those snow moments. Reading that took me back to the winter of 1995-96, snow blasting Oxford in a time where everyone just opted to stay home and maybe walk through the snow down to Schooner’s Llanding to sit by the fire, day drink, and eat seafood chowder out of bread bowls. But my memory, my moment, was walking through town and all the way out to the cemetery, in the middle of the night, with a long-time friend, lost in conversation, laughter, memories, and occasional deep thought, completely unaware of the cold or the time passing. I can’t recall a single thing that was said, but the moment is as strong as if it happened yesterday.
Another snow moment (snowment?) happened in December 2009 (pictured above), when we got snow dumped on us like crazy and Anna and I went exploring Easton, taking in the town in an almost white-out. We thought we’d get out and hit the playground at Idlewild Park, but the wind was whipping and snow was pelting our eyes so we stopped and opted for a photo, before continuing our exploring. It’s a photo that stands out in my mind–one I will always picture when thinking of Anna, and the experience of driving through town in the snow stands as a daddy-daughter moment.
What is it that helps create those moments for us? Mindfulness or awareness would be one thing. Being able to look around and take things in and not miss what’s going on around us. Most of us don’t count sunrises. They happen every morning–nothing momentous, right? But what if you make the time to take a few breaths and let the taste of coffee linger on your tongue while you watch the horizon. Or better yet, on a morning that you are blown away by the colors, throw your arms up and drink in the experience fully. Moments are there to be made.
In his book, “The Experience of Place,” Tony Hiss talks about simultaneous perception. He says there is our everyday perception, which allows us drive to places, accomplish tasks, times where we aren’t really dialed in to what’s going on around us. Hiss says that shifting to simultaneous perception:
“let’s me gently focus my attention and allows a more general awareness of a great many things at once: sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of touch and balance, as well as thoughts and feelings. When this kind of general awareness occurs, I feel relaxed and alert at the same time… I notice a sort of unhurried feeling–a feeling that there’s enough time to savor all the sights and sounds and other sensations coming in.”
Maybe we’ve all had those experiences, where we become keenly aware of a smell, and sound, and sight–maybe it’s spurred from tasting something off the grill outside, or ice cream near the river. A time when all of our senses are engaged and time seems to move differently. Mindfulness has a way of helping us be fully in the moment. Maybe being in the moment helps us create more moments?
When I think of the different moments I can call up from memory–some recent, some as far back as I can remember: I can remember my grandmother (my dad’s mother) who died before I turned five, she used to pretend to be the Terrible Tickler from a Sesame Street book we would read together, I must have been two or three–and I can see her, remember her, lovingly and jokingly coming to greet me, even though I can’t picture what her face looked like. Maybe the moments that are etched into our memories, that have become a part of who we are; maybe those moments are like lights in our minds, and as we look back on them, as we recall them, call them up, maybe those moments help light our way, through the everyday, to the place where we can look to, and be more open to, experiencing moments, making minutes into moments for today.
