Like sand through the hourglass ...

MICHELE MARR

“Know the true value of time; snatch, seize and enjoy every moment of

it.”

-- LORD CHESTERFIELD,

an 18th century

statesman and author

For a few days in early January, four tall ships -- the Lady

Washington, the Hawaiian Chieftain, the Exy Johnson and the Lynx --

were in Long Beach’s Rainbow Harbor and my husband, sailor and

ship-lover, took me to see them.

Aboard the Lynx, a sailor told a dozen or so adults and children

who had gathered closely around him how the crew manned the ship’s

heavy tiller in shifts.

In front of him where he stood were a compass and an hourglass. He

pointed out the compass, which had a face as large as a saucer, then

explained the hourglass. Made of brass and glass, it contained what

the skipper described as “enough sand to mark a half an hour.”

When all the sand funneled from top to bottom, the glass was

turned and a new man would take his half-hour turn at the helm. That,

the skipper informed us, is how we came by the expression “take your

turn.”

The children especially, so accustomed to digital watches and

analog clocks for keeping time, were fascinated by the sand in the

hourglass measuring time.

As the crowd dispersed, one young boy moved in for a closer look.

He watched the sand filter for a moment, then turned and asked, “Is

that really a half-hour in there?”

The skipper smiled. “That’s only sand in the hourglass,” he told

the boy. “The sand is used to keep the time.”

The boy was visibly still puzzled, but he nodded and moved on.

Time. We measure it. We keep it, we say, with hourglasses and

sundials, clocks and watches, by the sun and the moon and the stars.

It passes, but we cannot see it.

A few days ago, I got a piece of spam e-mail with a subject line

advertising “time in a bottle.” I couldn’t help reading it to see

what the sender had in mind.

It turned out to be an herbal concoction, which the e-mail

purported would cause me to lose body fat and wrinkles while at the

same time improving my energy levels, muscle strength, emotional

stability and memory.

“Lose weight while building lean muscle mass and reversing the

ravages of aging all at once,” the e-mail said.

I wish.

But even if an herbal potion could do such fantastic things, it

still would not, could not, return one second of time to me.

Like the grains of sand in an hourglass, the ravages of aging

reflect the passage of time, but they are not time itself. Reversing

them will not restore time any more than turning an hourglass will.

We mark time. We bide time. We cherish time. We waste time. We

spend time. We try to save it. But we cannot put it in a bottle.

During my first year of college, my English literature professor,

Mrs. Miller, insisted there was really no sense in saving time while

doing one thing unless we used the time we saved more profitably

doing another.

At the time, I remember, her reasoning struck me as needlessly

weighty. If I saved time while doing something I didn’t like to do,

then I used that time doing something I enjoyed, well, then that was

all that really mattered to me.

Time’s value rested in how much fun I could wring from it. That

was profit enough for me.

I didn’t know yet how famished that could leave my soul. It took

time for me to realize that most of life’s richest rewards come out

of self-discipline and sometimes sacrifice.

It took even longer for me to understand that my time is mine only

as a trust from God and gleaning its true worth or, as St. Paul put

it, “redeeming the time” is best done the way he described in a

letter to the Ephesians.

“Be careful how you live ... don’t be fools ... try to find out

what the Lord wants you to do ... always give thanks for everything

to God the Father.” Ephesians 5:15-20

St. Francis of Assisi explained it this way: “Preach the Gospel,

use words if you have to.”

John Wesley, the 18th century Anglican priest and Methodist

preacher, described it like this:

“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the

ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to

all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”

I wish.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.