The Quick

April 13, 2021

It seems, most months, that the month is half gone before I even find a chance to get all of the bills paid! Sometimes, the month is half gone before I get out of bed! Wow, time sure moves quickly. Time moves so quickly now that I am able to witness the maple tree out front as it makes it’s usual, seasonal change. It is not a slow, imperceptible change the way getting older can be. The Maple is unfolding itself before the eye and she is not alone. Stunning transformations are all around us at this time of year. Sure happens quickly! Lots happens quickly. The young neighbours down the lane drive quickly! Too quickly! The heart quickens, from time to time. The occasional quickenings are what make life, life.

I like the word ‘quick’ because of it’s other, more poetic connotations. The bringing to life by use of a defibrilator is to ‘quicken’ someone or, even more accurately, to plant a seed in fertile ground and surround it with the fuel of life is to quicken the flower. The breath of God quickens the spirit. I say that, knowing in my heart that God is not an entity in the way we know reality. God is not a ‘being’, a ‘beast’, an ‘aura’, a thing. God is but God is not and both statements are true at the same time. I don’t feel phony or a liar to say such things. I don’t believe as in the ordinary sense but I can say things like the spirit quickens to God’s touch and mean it…sincerely. To quicken a thing is to bring it to life. Simple. The awareness of God is the touch of God and that quickens the spirit, brings it to life.

The quick are the living. The dead are the dead. I am no longer as quick as I once was though I am alive. This does not mean that I am dying slower or (quicker) than I was after the moment of birth. Dead IS the direction this whole business is taking but I am not, yet, near dead. I am in-between, the way living is, the way life is, the way this mid-April morning and it’s weather is. No, I am not dead and yes, I am not as fully alive as I was only a little more than one year ago.
It is very trite, very much a platitude to say that not singing is to not live fully. It is, in particular, an odd statement, maybe presumptious “I am not fully alive when not singing,” when I say it. That is true because I am not a deeply trained or highly skilled singer. I don’t work as hard at singing as the claim might indicate I would but it is still a valid self-assessment. “I don’t fully live without singing.” That is all. I am not as fully alive today as I was more than a year ago, when I vibrated the rafters and quickened the still air of a concert hall.

Time is quick. Time is quickening. Time is not dead. Time is moving so quickly that I have lost more than a year to still and masked air. I am in-between. I am living but sort of leaning in the direction of not being as quick as I once was. I am losing time like an old clock. This wearying clock lost more than a year of quickening. Hahahaha. The chimes, the singing can’t be revived or restored to it’s last backup point. Ah well. That I am still quick enough to look forward to the not-so-far-off resumption of down-pitch or up-pitch singing is a wonderful thing.

…and God? Why did that come into my conversation? Well, I can tell you this much: Whatever God is, is what you can see. If I look out the window and notice my Maple tree mostly open already…um..God? Yeah, it’s in the quickness of spring, the quick unfolding of the Maple tree, the neighbours in their darn quick black car (somebody’s gonna get hurt!) God is hardly an invisibility. Just change your glasses and you can see. Personally, I have drifted over into the ‘cheaters’ section at Shoppers…a higher number of magnification. I had to change. A little change like a change in point of view and voila!

Now, I can see that God isn’t Uncle Carl, Uncle Carl is not longer quick. I can’t see Uncle Carl anymore except in memory. God is what you and I do see, even when not looking for anything and not finding anything. It is a mystery and a further mystery to find a proper sort of pronoun. God is transitional. They are in-between. None can deny the mystery…therefore a proof …and time? Yeah. Time is quick, always will be. Best get to it and hasten the singing, make it quick. I am slowing down, just like the neighbours had better do!