"Precious Time"

Rabbi's Notes - January 2008

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

I heard someone make a silly old joke today. Speaking of some tedious place, she said, "I spent a month there one day…"

Very rarely (flu-days maybe, or tax-prep days) I have days that feel like a month. More often I have months that feel like a day. Time is oh-so relative. I often think about how it is that some people struggle with way too much to do in a day, while others struggle just as hard to fill their time in a meaningful way. There seem to be a season of life -- when you have jobs and children at home, gardens, pets, a house to run -- that there is never enough time to get even the basics done. And then there seems to come a time for some people -- when health is a bit more bumpy, when it is hard to drive or be out at night, when maybe your memory or your energy slips a bit -- when the days can stretch on with little to look forward to.

I suppose that in a perfect life there would always be plenty to do interlaced with ample time to rest and renew. But in real life, as I often mutter to myself when rushing to the phone, pulling on my shoes with my mouth full of toothpaste, "You can't control the flow of obligation." Isn't it always on the day when you can't find time to sit down that your long-lost friend drops in out of the blue? Isn't it when you're already a week behind that you get that e-mail from me cheerily saying "Mitzvah opportunity!"? Wouldn't you love to give someone a ride or make a dinner and deliver it?

In fact every day has twenty-four hours, and every hour has sixty minutes. We all have exactly the same amount of time in a day. Interesting, isn't it, that we talk about "spending time"? We say that an unwelcome task "took too much time." We say, "I'd love to, but I just don't have the time." It is as though time were Monopoly money. We each have a stack to spend, to hoard, to invest, to squander. I don't know the game of Monopoly well enough to continue the analogy, but I do know that in the game everyone starts out with the same amount of cash, whereas in life none of us knows how much time we have been dealt. It definitely makes the game of life more exciting.

The way I see it now, as I turn fifty, time is [hopefully] not scarce. But it is precious, and the amount allotted to each of us is finite. Time is a resource. It is a dimension. It has its own pace, and it can neither be hurried nor delayed. Even though we use the phrases casually, you can't actually buy time. You can't save time. Time ticks by; it drips through the hour glass. Once it's gone, it's gone.

Jewish practices of Shabbat and holidays make the flow of time more beautiful. The rhythm of six days of endeavor and one day of Shabbat gives texture to time, like breathing in and breathing out. Those who daven daily must find their days more rhythmic as well, with pauses morning and evening to connect with the minyan and with God and with oneself.

Every Shabbat when we take time for the amidah, I find that there is a moment when I feel deeply quiet. My eyes are probably closed, but I am facing the window and the noonday sun, and I can feel it through my eyelids. I'll be praying along, and then at some moment I will take a breath and just find myself noticing the pleasure of that particular inhalation and exhalation, the incredible sensual bliss of a quiet breath. And I will say to myself, "Ah, that was the breath I was waiting for. Perfect." And I will continue my prayer in bliss.

Right now we are in this beautiful, dark mid-winter time, with Tu B'shevat speaking to us of deep roots in cold ground, subterranean stirrings, fruit with shells and skins, white wine, waiting awhile yet for things to warm and grow and redden. Hopefully we'll all find some time in this month of Shevat to be sleepy, to stay home, some time for the roads to flood, for the power to go out, some quilt-time, soup-time, some time with a good book or a good cat or a good cord of firewood. Hopefully we'll all get an opportunity to say, "No thanks, not now, I can't. Ask me again later." We wouldn't want for our whole lives to be like Shevat, but -- having missed the last two mid-winters by spending them in the Southern hemisphere -- I realize how wonderful and necessary and renewing this time is.

Hopefully however we are each spending our days and our hours and our seasons, they are bringing us nourishment for our bodies and our souls. Hopefully we are finding time for the mitzvot of pleasure, service, friendship and community. Even as I am writing this, I see how ubiquitously we speak of finding, losing, gaining, buying and spending time, as though we had any control at all over its passing.

My house is so quiet on this moonless late evening that I hear my clock ticking loud overhead. Another second, another second. My beloved Rabbeinu Bachya says that there is only one blessing that matters: being alive, for however long we are. Existing in time and space. In return for this one gift, he says, we owe our entire lives in service to the One who gives us life. It sounds a little exorbitant at first reading. But what else would we rather do with this gift of time we've been given than to offer it up in joy and gratitude?

The clock has ticked quite a few more times since I started musing here about the flow of time. My eyes are getting heavy. The time is arriving for me to draw my day to a close, to say goodnight to all of you. My calendar tells me that tomorrow -- 'God willing,' as I say more and more often these days when speaking of plans -- I will be seeing some friends and then my wonderful bar mitzvah student. I'll be meeting by phone with some rabbis I love. I'll take care of some little chores that don't seem like much in themselves but are part of things I care about. I'm looking forward to a day of regular life, a winter day, a rainy day, in life with all of you, our hearts connected. Good night and love…

- Rabbi Margaret Holub

© 2008 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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