I have started this piece a thousand times in my head and once or twice on my computer.  The opening is always intentionally cliché.  No time like the present.  Time keeps on slipping…into the future.  The simple truth is this: the article is coming to life at just the right time.

Tomorrow is a big day for me.  It will be a life marker, one that draws a line between this period of living and the next.  Things will soon be different.

My lymph nodes are in cahoots with my appetite, my skin and my pain receptors.  Proving that God has a sense of humor, I eat little but continue to gain weight, fluid, in spite of the truth my thinning face tells each day.  It has been a hazy, scary and frustrating ride.  Things will soon become clear.  Two test results will shine light on a series of seemingly random events.  Time will tell.

~~~

My interest in the passage of time began at a young age.  Somewhere between preschool and first grade I began to wonder if we are not actors in one great play, the universe our stage and God Almighty the director and producer.  We wee minions are cast into roles we do not necessarily understand.

What if God can stop time and change the outcome of the situation?  Let’s say, and this is purely hypothetical, Big Sister is picking on Little Sister.  BS (unintentional, I swear) is about to pummel LS, and God presses the pause button on the Big Movie Projector in the Sky.  No one knows how long the pause lasts – could be years, eons even – but when the time is right, The Big Guy pulls the rug out from under BS just as things move back into motion.  Outcome changed.  The future swayed.  LS defended.  Who’s laughing now?

I ran unencumbered in our back yard imagining at which moments the pause button needed pressing.  Tah-dah!  Now back to the present…

Cleary I was imaginative if not a little bored.  During this same period of time I also asked my father why it is you can still see color when you close your eyes.  It seemed to me the awareness of color lived in one’s head and not one’s eyes.  I practiced each night before going to sleep.  Eyes open.  Eyes closed.  Colorful patches and changing patterns.  Eyes open again.  I pondered the familiar riddle until sleep beckoned.

Another good one arose from a child’s (lack of) understanding of physics.  Our Episcopal school had a playground.  I showed up in sweet homemade 1970s dresses but played for keeps.  Inevitably a stumbled led to the tearing of my little-girl tights.  Let’s revisit the movie projector scenario.  First the stumble (…action slowing to a crawl as long, medium-brown, highlighted ringlets take flight…).  Then the point of impact.  Finally, the rise to my feet, crying, with bloodied knee and a hole in my tights.

Most kids would be upset by the pain.  I was tormented by where the material in the knee of my tights had gone.  Just like *that* it disappeared.  But where?  One particular day, and I remember it distinctly, a butterfly fluttered by just as I rose from my playground ashes and spied the hole in my new tights.  The missing fabric patch became a butterfly and flitted away.  Naturally!  Now it all made sense.  I knew where butterflies came from and no longer feared my falls.  If I fell, it was because God wanted a new butterfly in the world.  The lingering problem of just when this transformation took place was resolved by my belief that Father Time (a.k.a. God, first cousin to Santa) had a steady hand on the pause button, waiting to take care of God things, including the creation of butterflies.  He had it under control.

~~~

Travel forward on my time machine to college.  Now a religion major, the subject of time arose again, like butterflies from my playground ashes.

It seems there are different types of time – two to be exact.  There’s time of the clock, chronos, and God’s time, kairos.  Now you don’t have to be a genius to realize how interested I became in the subject of kairos.  Never was a better word spoken.  “Kairos is time beyond time,” Dr. Yoder confidently offered.  The flame kindling my latent imagination began to glow.

~~~

Fast forward again two years.  A card-carrying liberal arts graduate, I worked and lived as a volunteer at Habitat for Humanity international headquarters.  I was dirt poor and infinitely satisfied with my lot in life.  Americus, GA, offered old-fashioned Southern pace, a downtown hot-dog joint called Monroe’s and wide open spaces for endless bicycle adventures.  It was the best of times.

By some large piece of grace, I worked with a fellow Tarheel, a Baptist preacher from the NC mountains named Tom.  He was essentially the spiritual foundation of Habitat as it grew from the grassroots.  He was also at times the organization’s conscience, a tough position for even the surest of souls.

Two years before my arrival in GA, Tom was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  By the time he began to envision a national training publication for local affiliate board members, his cancer had returned.  My job with Habitat was to do whatever Tom said to do.  So with great willingness and virtually no skill, I supported his efforts to launch the new publication, even sorting the bulk mailing on the floor of my small and sterile office.

My time in Tom’s shadow was very short.  We didn’t honestly know each other well.  There was just something about his grace and humor a Southerner had to love.  And it was because we shared NC roots that I was asked to write the cover article for Habitat’s new training publication, “The Affiliate Update,” announcing his death.

Without a single idea of where to start, I reached back in time to my Lutheran college days:

“Every so often something happens when we know things will never be the same.  We depart chronos, the time of the clock, and enter kairos, or “God time.”  One such happening…”

Still a two-dimensional understanding of time, I noted the (seemingly) obvious distinction between periods of living history.  Before and After.  More and less meaningful.  Ordinary, extraordinary.  Earthly, divine.  The two were separate and unique areas on the timeline of life.  This understanding stuck around for quite some time.

~~~

My linear vision of life changed a bit when a graduate professor taught me two things about the continuum.  1) It never ends.  2) It is actually an arc, a never-fully-completed circle.  Ergo, for instance, political extremists from either party (assuming the standard two) are really the same annoying person, only dressed in different clothing.

The shape of life is round.  The color of life is gray.  My two-dimensional world began to gain depth.  I entered the third dimension.

~~~

I carried the continuum banner, including the Hegelian dialectic (a pattern of movement along the continuum), for years.  Nearly 96 percent of life falls within two standard deviations of the norm.  Nearly all of life is nearly the same shade of gray.  Literal extremes do not exist, and the space for the extraordinary is rather small.  Pure evil and goodness in people, for instance, are not possible.  Hitler and Gandhi are uncommon.  Most of us are a healthy mix of Good and Bad, Light and Darkness.  Life is gray, I say.

~~~

The curve of grace in my linear life grew and changed form over time.

When I left Habitat headquarters after two years, I sought change for one primary reason: I did not bring value.  My colleagues had graduate degrees, professional experience and wisdom to promote Habitat’s work.  I, on the other hand, did as instructed by some wise man whose office happened to be across the hall.

I sought two things: 1) fund-raising experience, and 2) a graduate program in human services.  Both would help me sort out where in the world of Habitat I could contribute.  Some years and a few jobs later, with any luck, I would be able to return ‘home’ to Habitat with a portfolio that boasted something besides ‘nice’ and ‘willing’ as key professional assets.

Time marched on.

~~~

One spring about 13 years later I found myself defeated and without a job.  My nonprofit résumé had offered the expected highs of purpose and the lows of incompetent leadership.  Times were tough.

I had begun to question whether there would or should be another nonprofit job.  I might switch sides to corporate community relations.  After all, I had not yet made a living.  I had, however, made a meaning-filled life.

One day, sitting on my living room floor with my faithful doggie duo, the answer appeared: there will be one more nonprofit job, and it will be with Habitat, in Durham.

I can’t say it was a voice, exactly.  I’m not prone to such experiences.  The message, however, was heard loud and clear.  The circle of life with Habitat was about to roll around to a new beginning.  But how and when?  I shared the news with my mother by telephone that night.

Two days later, Mom called.  She read from the Sunday paper words I still find incomprehensible.  Habitat for Humanity sought a development director, in Durham.  Monday I sent a fated e-mail announcing myself.  The next day I interviewed.  Two days later I was hired.  The universe handed me the jackpot of all gifts.  Things had come full circle.

~~~

To say Habitat continued to offer gifts is like saying chocolate tastes okay.  More important than the number of gifts is their nature.  New friends taught me the difference between luck and blessings.  I began to understand that most things are “God things” and that kairos is alive and well every second of every day.  We simply do not stop to acknowledge it.  We block our blessings, to quote a former colleague.  To quote another, we sometimes don’t let God do God’s job.  Reaching back in time to my friend Tom, “At base, underneath it all, all of life is spiritual in nature, though not necessarily in form.”

~~~

Just when I think I have matriculated to spiritual adolescence, something happens that takes me back to my butterfly tights days on the St. Stephen’s playground.  I am in remedial class.  Again.

My last attempts at starting this piece were prompted by two consecutive events.

– Cousin Chris.  I had the honor of accompanying two dear cousins to a consultation with a brain surgeon.  The diagnosis is a nasty tumor.  The doctor was kind yet clear.  It’s a tough row to hoe, but he can offer time.  There’s nothing like hearing such words to put one’s priorities in order

– Pretty Patt.  Similar situation, different dear friend.  Her mother lay dying at UNC just a few weeks ago.  As is sometimes the case, her mother rallied and had one very good, energetic day before the final decline.  A friend and I had the honor of sharing a few minutes of that day.

Among the obvious, potentially trite, lessons: real challenges call us to take new perspective.  Only I’m not one for the trite.  There was an important essence still missing here that eluded me, for a while.  I continued to ponder how to write this ‘time piece’ but just couldn’t find that One True Thing to get it started.

~~~

I’m a believer that we know when we know.  Answers (or questions) that matter reveal themselves, in time.

Enter the lymph nodes and the questionable gang with whom they hang – the pain receptors and such.  Risking another cliché, it is fair to say that recently in my life time stood still.

Let’s skip the drama and get to the point.  I gained 20+ pounds of abdominal fluid at the same time nausea, pain and discomfort set in – all in a few short weeks.  Add to that scarring, photo-sensistive skin lesions and itchy lymph nodes, and you have yourself a recipe for something most people don’t anticipate or welcome.

The great news is all scary cancers have been ruled out.  I am thank-filled.  There is no clear diagnosis.  However, it is abundantly clear this is an inflammatory process – connective tissue disease.  These things are chronic and tricky.  That’s the flip side to the cancer gamble.  Life expectancy with most of this stuff is just about normal, but it’s not a fun ride at times.  As someone I know once said of autoimmune disease, the good news is you are going to live; the bad news is you are going to live.  Now, I don’t subscribe to the pessimistic side, most days.  There is, on the other hand, some truth to the notion.  It is both a curse and a blessing.  (Most things have at least two sides.  It is how we choose to see them that matters.)

What you will not hear from me is the expected – that I now taste more of the spice of life.  Sky diving, Rocky Mountain climbing – all that.  To be honest, and no offense, but for me that kind of awakening is somewhat cheap.  Or maybe it’s universal, and when it happens to us, we tend to believe we are the first transformed by the experience.  It seems to me to be inwardly focused.  Me, me, me.  I created that wheel.

Looking outward allows the real opportunity for growth.  Normally I would offer that serving other people is what takes us beyond ourselves.  But I think the next concept is actually more transcendent and more valuable.

Taking it back to the present theme – time – and the Big Guy and his pause button, standing still to experience the passing of time without activity or thought is the only practice that makes much sense to me.  The passing of time is really the passage of meaning.  If we choose to cheapen it with noise and clutter, we get less return.

Ironically the loudest, easiest to understand of these moments are those we experience with the least noise between our own ears.  It is the gift of presence that presents the lasting gifts.  To quote “Alice in Wonderland,” don’t just do something, stand there!  Less is more in the quality we bring to time.

I’ll make it concrete.  I worked in my yard last weekend, the hours before the impending diagnosis, with little thought of anything except dirt under my nails.  Here is some of what I learned:

–          Small lavender butterflies like the east side of my yard.

–          The greenest little grasshoppers hide well on a single blade of grass.

–          When you spot black spot mold on your roses, you really should deal with it right away.  (Half the vegetation on mine is now gone.)

–          There are more weeds per square foot of sod than you might imagine.

–          I know the distinct sounds of some neighbors’ cars.

–          Tree frogs talk to one another, and their calls sound like barking dogs.

–          If you leave your watch inside, your body will tell you when it’s time for food or drink.  We don’t have to direct everything.

What we so often refer to as ‘time out’ in our lives is in reality best spent as TIME IN.  The most valuable time is that spent fully engaged in the experience, without distraction (including guilt or longing for the past and anxiety about the future).  It involves the senses and intentional openness, a lack of control over outcome.

Here is my current bottom line: time is best measured not in quantity but in the quality we bring to it, the significance we allow if we would but sit still and shut up for a change.

In my fourth decade, the value of time is no longer two- or even three-dimensional.  As a wise man said, at base, underneath it all, all of life is spiritual in nature, though not necessarily in form.  The fourth dimension may well be transcendence.  And it is only possible by planting our bare feet firmly in the soil.

In a sense I have come full circle to the innocent preschooler on the playground with few set assumptions.  My ponderings have changed from the formation of butterflies to the creation and meaning of butterfly rashes.  And I am solidly committed to waiting to hear what lessons, what new life, these new butterflies bring.  It is a beginning, and listening for the purpose is on me.  I had better get to it.  In a real sense I am a child again, learning this new skill, one simple lesson at a time.

Last thought: the accumulation of meaning is literally that – an accumulation.  My current proposal for a visual image of time is a snowball.  The more minutes it stays in motion on the ground, the more substance it gathers.  At the end of our snow(wo)man lives, we have literally added mass to our own identities.  It is possible for there to be more to who we are each day.  It is a choice, in any life circumstance.

~~~

If that were not enough cause for gratitude, here’s more:

–          This is not lymphoma, the most recent hypothesis ruled out.  My biggest concern was who might serve as back-up to take my 2-yr-old dog through adulthood.  The other dogs are old.  Mischief is a babe, and quite attached.  (For the record, Karen, the answer was you.)  Chiefy and I did a head butt of gratitude yesterday, and if you know her, you know exactly what this means.

–          Some good people have done some really kind things.  Without knowing my situation, the guys at Biscuitville offered free eggs with cheese on diagnosis day.  Similarly, an acquaintance at my favorite diner offered a free T-shirt, just because.  People who honestly know little about me ask daily for updates as they see me struggle to pretend things are normal.

–          A couple of great doctors have made all the difference.  Thanks especially for laughing at my dumb jokes.  Thanks also for keeping me in stitches.  (Get it?)

–          A Duke PA who sat next to me during my pedicure this evening asked about the biopsy bandages and offered advice and information.  Then she offered to raise money from her colleagues to build a Habitat house.  I accepted the offer.

~~~

My time is up, but just for the night.  Even the passage of meaning needs a little rest every now and then.

Life is a gift, a free gift.  Use your time wisely.

Much peace.

© Mitzi Viola, 5/22/11