Each morning when I awaken it seems that all the minutes in the day are already claimed.
Even here at school, where my hours of reading and writing papers are less structured than they are back at the monastery, there is still a sense of fullness, as if all the hours are spoken for and I am stranded alone on the sidelines, unable to break in and ask an hour for a dance.
But I realize I’ve been thinking about time in the wrong way. It is not time whose dance card is full, with me as the quiet wallflower too bashful to break in and ask for a dance. It is my dance card that is full, with every dance already committed, every partner already penciled in, every hour accounted for.
Meanwhile, time stands still at the open window, waiting for me to stand still too, to leave my dance card on the dance floor and cease the ceaseless motion that keeps me far from the stillpoint of prayer.
The stillness of time beckons me into the fullness of time, to sit with all the time in the world as together we watch eternity spread its wings across the horizon.