Basic Birth 4/06/09

All other days have either disappeared into darkness and oblivion or not yet emerged from it. Today is the only day there is.

Frederick Buechner
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Welcome to my world.
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Time is a gracious friend and also a fierce enemy. We can measure the past with memories, charts and journals. We can parcel out the future according to our needs and wishes. The thing we can't measure is the present, at least not according to time.

Time is a relative measurement. It usually refers to how long it took for something to happen. It's related to space in how long it takes an object to go from one place to another. It's also a linking mechanism. It can identify an event with another event. Such and such a thing happened at the same time as the other. History books will give us charts with fascinating information that is of relatively no use, except to historians. Alexander the Great was born on the same day that the Temple of Diana at Epheses came down.

Although the future is unpredictable we can still make charts to help us get through it. There's the Mom's mental chart of when the kids are up, dressed and fed in time for the school bus. When dinner starts in order to be ready for the family when they're hungry. Things have to be done by 10 so she can watch the TV special on panda bears.

In broadcasting there is something known as back timing. The announcer kinows how many lines of copy he can read in one minute. If he's playing a song at the end of an hour that leads up to the 3:00 news with a tone on the hour, and if he has a 60 second commercial and a 30 second commercial, as well as a station break, he has to back time that record so that it ends at exactly 2:58:10. Announcing the song will take him to 2:58:20. The 60 second commercial will take him to 2:59:20. The 30 second commercial will take him to 2:59:50. He has 10 seconds to do a station break and say "At the tone the time will be 3 o'clock." Then comes the tone and the news. If he does it right it sounds effortless and automatic. Broadcasters live their lives by the clock.

The only thing about time we can't measure is the now, this instant. It is the only thing we are ever conscious of and yet it instantly becomes the past. Every note the singer sings passes into history as soon as he sings it. Every pitch the pitcher throws disappears into oblivion the moment it is thrown. The reading of this sentence has become already a part of your past. And that is why I think it is so important to be always alert and receptive of thoughts, ideas and opportunities. The now is where we live, where we have always lived and always will live. Every moment of our lives is a birth. It's a reaching up out of the cradle for the arms of a new experience, a higher lesson and a greater awareness of joy.

DB - The Vagabond
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May the cherubs of spring visit you today.
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