6 ms·
I sympathize with this a lot. "A Severe Mercy" by Sheldon Vanauken is one of my favorite books, if not my favorite. A significant theme of that work is "moment
by dbatten 7y ago
I sympathize with this a lot.
"A Severe Mercy" by Sheldon Vanauken is one of my favorite books, if not my favorite. A significant theme of that work is "moments made eternity," where eternity is used to connote both a sense of timelessness and of heaven. The author finds that his (and his wife's) most joyous times were precisely those moments where they lost track of time and simply enjoyed something (e.g., gazing at the night sky stretching out above the ocean) as long as they cared to. When they were done, they couldn't tell if minutes or hours had passed, but it didn't matter. In fact, that was part of the joy of the moment. Ultimately, they find themselves longing for the Christian ideal of heaven, where eternity will be all they have and they'll no longer be constrained by time.
I too find that I enjoy such moments of timelessness... one in particular sticks out in my head. I had hiked with my 2-year-old son down to a creek in a local state park. I sat in the grass and watched while he threw pine cones and sticks into the water, splashed around, and just had a blast doing what boys do. When I checked the time, I realized that we had been there for nearly 3 hours, though I could have sworn it was only a few minutes.
I find clocks as useful as anybody else, but I also find escaping them for a bit to be a delight...