Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future.
- Steve Miller Band
As I drove to campus this morning, from out of nowhere this song lyric rose to the surface of my thoughts. It's an obvious observation. Of course time slips into the future. It doesn't slip backward into the past now, does it?
But, friends, I have to ask: does time seem to be slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future more quickly these days? It's October, which means we're in the final leg of a calendar year. And it's late October, to boot. In my mind, the fall semester just started. We're still warming up! But in reality, we're nine weeks deep into classes, and trees are dropping leaves as they pass peak fall foliage, and chilled morning temperatures will soon make jackets essential, not optional. Give us another week or so, and we'll need to proactively pull the ice scrapers from their summertime garage storage and return them to their respective vehicles so we're prepared for the first frosted windshields.
Time keeps on slippin' into the future. The train is leaving the station. Forward ho!
To make sense of things, today I'm taking a moment to pause. This is somewhat of a forced pause, actually. The online course management system for our whole university is down, which means that I currently can't access the pile of work that needs my attention. It's a ceasefire for students and professors alike. Nobody can budge.
I know that work will still be there, patiently waiting, when the system is up and running again. Having lived through plenty of semesters, I also know that the work will get done. It always does.
So, today, during this gap when my work is inaccessible, I reflect on the past few weeks. What have I been doing? I've taught classes, for one. We rented out house for three home football weekends. We've gone to football games, and we've supported our team, despite unprecedented losses and struggles. One non-football weekend, we drove through the countryside, visited a local farm, and worked our way through a corn maze. Another non-football weekend (as fall weekends in a college town always fall into this distinction of home-football game and non-home-football game), I was a vendor at a local upscale flea market, selling beautiful odds and ends in my little curated booth, which felt a little dreamy.
There's been good living this fall.
I scroll through the photos on my phone, enjoying visible reminders of other moments: the high school's Homecoming parade and dance, an evening gathering in my basement with friends, small house projects throughout their before-and-after processes, an especially beautiful sunset while taking an evening walk with a neighbor, a clip from a Phil Wickham concert I attended, the progression of leaves intensifying on our sunburst red maple tree, a Young Life gathering of 40+ students in our backyard, a video of my tap dancing instructor as she's demonstrating the steps to our Uptown Funk routine. (Yes, I'm taking a 10-week Thursday night tap dancing class, per the invitation of a friend. No, I am not good at it. Yes, it's still amazing.)
When I pause to reflect, I see where the time has slipped — it's slipped into the little cracks of little moments within little days that, when added up, build the sum of a life.
I just checked, and the university's course management system is still down. I suppose I'll pause a little longer, adding today's moments of reflection and appreciation to the sum total.
