Time.
When you are consciously aware of it, it ticks along on a predictable disintegrating course. One moment after another. We live on a time-line in our waking hours, but in sleep we are not held to so demanding a master. In our dreams, three full-length movies can flash by in five minutes. In a coma, six months can pass as an instant.
I woke at 3:05 am this morning, my mind racing from one excited place to another. Thoughts about my 6:45 breakfast meeting and how much time I needed to prepare for it. Anticipation over the new "Good News" cartoons I'm finishing for Bible Song. Dread over a number of deadlines looming over me and the impossible schedules I've set for myself. Prayer for my sister Ruth, who had tears in her eyes for the first time when we parted on Easter Sunday. Laments over of my daughter leaving for college. (She has been so fun to have around and it's been such an honor to be her dad!) Concerns over my own dad signing up for assisted living and moving out of the house. A fleeting guilt something I did 16 years ago that hurt someone... a sin long confessed but, evidently, not long forgotten. A musical kyrie over my hypocrisies and lack of grace in another situation.
I closed my eyes wide awake and, in a half-sleep mind-trick, transported to a day thirty years from now when my kids are trying to talk me into a nursing home. I bounced to a mailing that didn't get out this week for my Twin Cities conference on April 28. Awake. Awake. Wide awake. "I'm never going to fall asleep. I might as well go to Walmart right now and buy the envelopes..."
I looked at the clock. All that had passed, and it was now 3:07.
I tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable. Trying to drift off. Wondering if I should simply get up and do something productive or lie there for three sleepless hours before my breakfast meeting.
"I'm never going to fall asleep. Maybe I should take something. Or maybe I should just get up and pee and lie here for another three hours. Or maybe I should go to Walmart. Or maybe I should fax 500 hand-written invitations to every church in the Twin Cities who hasn't registered for my conference yet before my breakfast meeting. Naw, some of the fax machines are in parsonages and the last thing I want to do is ring a parsonage in the middle of the night. Maybe I should start an animation company for Bible cartoons. Maybe I should refloor my cabin. Maybe I should cut the trees down in my yard. How am I going to get everything done before Kathryn's graduation? Maybe I should go on the road with Thrivent? Maybe I should start a TV show on "tweeners" for Comcast.
I looked at the clock. All that had passed, and it was now 3:09. I might as well get up and get three hours of work done before my breakfast meeting. I'm never going to fall asleep.
I got up and went to the bathroom. "This is never going to work. I might as well start writing a screenplay. Maybe one about a guy who can't fall asleep and has an important 6:45 breakfast meeting that could change his life. He wonders if his dreams are his real life and if his waking life is actually the dream. He prefers his dream life over his 9 - 5 life and wonders how he can trade them.
Or maybe the screenplay about the guy with an obsessive compulsive disorder who has it in his mind that he can only own 23 items or he'll upset the equilibrium of the universe. He falls in love with a kleptomaniac.
Or maybe the screenplay about the nun who volunteers for the LA police chaplain duty and talks a guy wearing a dynamite vest out of blowing up a 7-11 by carrying in a puppy. "You going to blow up a nun with a puppy?"
I wrote and rewrote the outlines for these three screenplays in my mind... too lazy to get up and grab a piece of paper or a pen. Then looked at the clock. It was now 3:11.
"I'm never going to fall asleep. I might as well get up and do something productive."
I drifted off for a minute.
Just a minute. Then I looked at the clock.
It was 6:50.
I was now late for my breakfast meeting.
Time.
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