Quick

Time is stretchy.  We all know this.  Time can slow down and drag--usually when you don't want it to.  For me, this semester has been speedy.  I sit here somewhat amazed that I am nearing the halfway point.  But wait, I think, didn't I just get started?

Even some of my usual rituals have been sped up.  Usually at this point in the semester I hop in the car and spend somewhere around eight hours driving to get home and get away.  This time, I flew across Pennsylvania thanks to delightfully cheap roundtrip airfare.  Eight hours was condensed to one and a half.

Life has been quick.  Part of this, I know, comes from figuring out how to craft an efficient schedule.  Part of it has been joy, a buoyant thing to have around.  Part of it has been refusing to allocate the purpose of my life to some future date that I am slowly dragging myself toward.

I think of Christ who will come to judge "the quick and the dead."  This bit of archaic language preserved in the Apostle's Creed always made me giggle.  To this day, the mental image I have of this plays out somewhat morbidly in a busy street.  The quick are those who cross the street in time.  The dead, well, you get the point.  But really, the quick are just that, the lively, those who continue on and remain nimble.

Maybe I've become a little more stretchy, a little more nimble, a little less...dead.  As the book of Daniel says, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake!" So I might be a little dusty, but I'm getting there.