The Secret of Life Is Enjoying the Passage of Time

“How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”

--Doctor Seuss, aka Theodore Geisel

The baby becomes the toddler. The toddler becomes the child. The child becomes the teen. The teen becomes the young adult.

One year breast fed and the next a toddling two-year-old. Last year in diapers, dipping his little toes into the waves on the beach but only if Mom holds his hand, and now, this year, running around the shore like he owns the place and can’t be stopped. Twelve months ago, an awkward and shy middle school kid, struggling to figure out how to live in his new adult body and then this August, he’s a tall and deep voiced teenager, funny, handsome, ready to take on the world, even driving the family car.

Next summer? I probably won’t see him. He’ll already be off to college.

I can’t help thinking this way each early September, in the days right after Labor Day, when the endless days of summer give way to the inexorable days of fall.  When I go through all the photos I’ve taken in my just finished travels to visit faraway friends and family and I see in those frozen snapshots of time just how quickly time passes.

Where did the summer go? Where did that little boy go?

So, I’m tempted to get a bit melancholy at the forward momentum of all of our days as mortals, as God created humans, always growing up, growing older, bound by the mysterious force of time. Maybe I want to stop time, I imagine. I want that kid to not grow up anymore or at least not grow up so fast. I want to still be able to read him a book before bedtime, Dr. Seuss, or “Good Night Moon!” But of course I can’t and if you ask him how he feels about time and growing up, he’ll tell you that time cannot go by fast enough, that he wants to be big, he so desires the days to fly by so he can become who God wants him to be, some day.

But me? I’d be happy to just pause time for a little bit. Postpone the white hairs that are taking over my beard. Push back the creaks and aches that tell me my body is not getting any younger. Waking up in the morning and feeling some twinge or dull pain and then thinking, “Well I never felt that, and there, before!” I was looking forward to my high school reunion this fall but then realized it’s been forty years since I was a teenager, a restless young man who so wanted to just get out of that small town and start my life and get time moving. 

Where did that kid go?

That’s the weird thing about time.  When we are children and youth it cannot go by fast enough.  How slow time is then, just before Christmas, just before the last day of school, just as we wait for our college application letter or to buy our first house or have our first kid or start a new a career. But at some point, time speeds up and we cannot slow it down, no matter how hard we try. How fast time is then, when we see our daughter wave from her dorm room at school and she turns away and we can’t believe that she’s so grown up. When friends start talking about retirement and we think: is it that time already? When we start reading the obituaries, and not the comics, first thing, in the newspaper.

But time: it just is. Time and its terms are never negotiable. Time is a beautiful gift from God, precious, limited, finite. We can use it wisely. We can waste it away recklessly. But always it is here and then it is gone then it is a new time and then it goes by again and then and then….

And so: will we see time as our friend or foe? As something to be denied or something to be fully embraced?  Will we run away from time or might we instead, set sail on the sea of time and let it take us away on its currents and trust that in time, that’s where we discover this one beautiful truth: time and human life is a miracle, from our Creator, and so our job is to accept it graciously and gratefully.   

As the poet and songwriter James Taylor wrote, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. Any fool can do it. There ain't nothing to it. Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill. But since we're on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride.”

Let this be our September promise: to enjoy and maybe even learn to love, the passage of time.      

True Patriotism: More Than a President or Politics or Flag

"The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen."

--Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

I don’t usually think of myself as very patriotic. Sure: I fly an American flag outside my house. I stand up and take off my hat at a baseball game and sing the national anthem when the chords of that ancient song are played. I choke up when watching an old World War II movie, as the actors make a gallant and courageous stand, and the corny music swells and I get all teary. I vote whenever I can, hope my fellow citizens do as well.

But I think it’s rare to witness a deeper patriotic moment and remember how precious the title of American citizen really is. How blessed I am to have the rights and the responsibilities that accompany citizenship. How grateful I am to call America home, even as I’m frustrated at how we sometimes fail to live up to the ideals that are supposed to embody our place in the world. 

Values: like justice, fairness, and freedom. Defending the powerless. Opening our arms to those who flee persecution and poverty. Liberty and justice for all, everyone, no one left out.

So, it surprised me on a recent summer night at how moved I was to watch a group of twenty immigrants take the oath of American citizenship. It happened, of all places, on a baseball field, on a warm and humid August night, between innings at a minor league game in Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Dragons are celebrating their twentieth anniversary this summer and to mark that birthday they treated me and 7,909 other fans to an unexpected lesson in patriotism.

Assembled by the third base line was a group of twenty people: men and women, of many colors and backgrounds, from many countries, all so excited to be taking this profound step. In the front row, two women wore hijabs, traditional dress for some observant Muslims. One woman enthusiastically waved an American flag. In the back row, a tall man wore a jaunty black hat and had a smile a mile wide. Before them stood a federal judge, incongruous in his formal black robes. And then the crowd: we all stood up and the stadium grew quiet and those soon to be citizens raised their rights hands, and said in unison….

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic….”

What struck me as the most powerful promise in that short oath, was that each person was asked to respect, honor and defend the United States Constitution, the circa 1789 collection of ultimate laws that bind us all together as Americans. Those new citizens were not asked to honor a person or a political party or the President or the Congress or any other government official. They were not required to be liberal or conservative, to say they’d live in just a red state or a blue state in the future. 

There was no religious test in the oath, no requirement that if you come to the United States and seek to call it home you have to be a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, or claim no faith. That oath didn’t ask if they’d come here to flee political persecution or crime or poverty or to go to college or to start a business or to just be free.

All the oath required was that they each agree to live by the democratic norms and hopes spelled out in the 230-year old document that binds us as a nation; and that they will always defend the laws contained within it, the Constitution, even with their lives, if necessary.

To see these men and women freely make those promises: for me, that embodied true patriotism. 

Patriotism in action, patriotism as love of country, of democracy, of the rule of law. And not because some particular person occupies the Oval Office. Presidents come and go, to be judged by history and the goodness of the country that they leave behind, or not. Patriotism: not partisanship, not everyone for themselves but instead, E Pluribus Unum, from many, one.

Patriotism: not the posing kind, the mere sporting of a cheap metal flag pin on a lapel, or preening before a bank of American flags at a press conference, as if these actions alone makes one a patriot. 

No. Real patriotism always runs deep, in in the living, in the doing. Patriotism sees one’s political opponent, not as an enemy of the people, but instead the loyal opposition, Patriotism is generous, invites people from around the world to join the United States, to bring with them their cultures, adding to the rich tapestry of the American experiment. Patriotism is found in actual service to fellow citizens: in the armed forces, in volunteerism, in caring for your neighbor.

When’s the last time you really appreciated your life as a citizen and could you or I live up to the oath of citizenship? Patriotic questions--we all should ask and we all should answer.