216 - Measuring Time

April 19, 2001

As we anticipate our daughter E.G.'s college graduation, I look back and forward. I try to consolidate my memories, the changes and those things that have remained constant. Perhaps we remember beginnings more easily, because they have the brilliance of the new. But there's also goodness in those things that have history, that last.

Two Hundred Sixteen

Measuring Time

Blessed is Adonai, Who embraces the length of beauty, the depth of wonder, and the blessing of endurance.

You give us sweet time, that in its passing
Yields bold periods to punctuate dailyness;
Fleeting hours are clothed in a garb of years,
Moments to memories.

How do we praise the lasting
Instead of the beginning?
The hundredth milepost,
Not just the starting line?

Broken glass beneath the chuppah
Previews the tears of living
And all our righteous days.
The birth cry opens a life lived well.

Stand with us by the sick bed as we shower devotion,
Meticulous caring, pain assuaged by well-worn tales.
Help us measure attention to detail, to honesty,
To integrity, with a length of days,
The only scale that holding us in balance,
Measures true.

Infinite One, for all these interludes, we honor You.
You bless us with breadth and depth and time,
You give us a portion of creation and destiny,
Ours to savor, to ponder and pursue.

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