The Only Way to Slow time Down

S ilver hisses on ice, blades gliding through February.

The wind blows from the west and our cheeks burn raw and they shoot the puck across the glass into wide open net and that wind carries their cheering laughter across land.





Up on the highway, half-ton pick-up trucks blur. Rough hands lay hard on horns with cheers of their own for farmers skating fields. Our kids, blurring too, raise their sticks off ice, saluting back the happy wonder of now.





Fraying ends in hands, I tie more laces taut. Tall Girl calls for me to come race.










It's a statuatory holiday here, schools, banks all closed. Third Monday in February celebrates Family Day. More horns blast, joining our celebration.

Last week, Winter had melted, flooding our fields, and when she pulled herself together again, she froze solid the front of our farm, up by the road, a private rink stretching over acres of plowed earth. Farm traffic hails our holy-day.

Tall Girl beckons and I come. She wears the skates I wore as a girl and I feel young and old all at the same time. Her and I, we draw sharp lines, speed, across frozen waters. Arms driving, hunched low, sliding into it, she resoundingly wins. I clap and she grins and light falls behind her lighting all our world.

Could she ever be more beautiful than this moment?

And for a moment, racing time tempers.







When I fully enter into now, the weight of being fully in the moment slows time down.







Full attentiveness is the only thing that does.





Lord, making every moment pregnant with meaning slows careening time down to a lumbering gait. That joy in You might be birthed. Father God, fill me with full attentiveness....



Photos: farmers skating their fields, home and barn and sheds just over the hill under the tall pines