‘Time’ and other myths
By David Myers
A few weeks ago I found myself asking God,
“Why did you create time? Why do we have to age, our minds buckling to
the pressures of life and hardening to the joy that as children, we discovered
around each and every corner?” If anyone could give me an answer to an
impossible question, it was God – him being God and all. ...
There’s a small patch of sidewalk in
We walked and we talked – that 16-year-old
talk -- of girls and whether this might be the year that one of us actually
finds a girlfriend (turns out, it wouldn’t be); of “hobbits” and “orks” and Middle Earth, and the unspoken hope that we’d
step around a curve and see an elf darting through the evergreens (one of the
reasons we didn’t have girlfriends). There was talk of school and teachers,
including that sadistic gym teacher who we’d have called a shaved ape were it
not for the fact that he was hairier than a gorilla.
Another day, another
walk along the street of pines, and I envision my dad, my brother and me
driving up a steep, windy mountain road in our old Plymouth Fury III, parking
at the base of the Continental Divide aside Jenny Lake, across from which a
year-round glacier crept up the side of the mountain. It was our first camping
trip and we learned quickly that slumber bags aren’t conducive to slumber when
camping near glaciers. I envision the morning, waking from a restless night,
the sun beating down on me and my brother through the walls of our canvas tent,
the sound of a crackling fire tended to by my dad, who each morning cooked up a
steaming pot of hot chocolate. I remember hooking wriggly worms and their look
of impossible pain. I remember staring out at my fishing bobber for one hour –
two hours – three hours, and then having Spam for supper.
• • •
There’s a place in
The other day at
On those warm nights, I’d often walk to the
park at the end of my street. I’d lay down on the grass and look up at the
night sky, and imagine ....
There was nothing that could destroy a warm
night under the stars. A bad grade couldn’t steal its beauty. The school bully
could bully me until my nose bled, but even he couldn’t touch the stars. I
could even get into trouble for eating a Fudgesicle
before dinner – okay, three Fudgesicles -- and the
stars would still be there.
Under the night sky, I could dream of being
Captain Kirk -- as I often did. (Only I’d have hung on to that blue alien lady;
she was a fox.) I remember looking up to the stars and yearning to be
taken for a ride by aliens. “C’mon!” I’d whisper. “I actually WANT to go for a
ride! Only without all the weird implants and probes and
things. Okay?”
Where did all those times go? Are the
joyous events of our past, events that sometimes revolve around people long
since departed – are they really gone, like pages of a book in a shredder? Or
is time more like a computer hard drive, where, no matter what you do, those
events are still in there somewhere -- able to be re-lived, if only you know
how to find them?
Perhaps all those wonderful moments aren’t
really gone. Perhaps all those events are simply stored, not just as memories
but actual events waiting for each one of us – real
and tangible moments awaiting us in our eternal life in heaven. Remember Rule
#1 when it comes to heaven: Thou shalt not limit
your perceptions.
Why couldn’t heaven be a game of Frogger with my buddy, or an afternoon around
It’s just a thought I had a few weeks ago
as I stood in my backyard on a warm summer night, staring up into the
star-filled sky, imagining... .