Tag Archives: moments

Jul 17 2016
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

sitting with friends of friends and friends


The world becomes small like a teak table in the backyard garden or the kitchen table with whiskey and ice remains taunting from the bottom of short, stocky glasses. 

The world too becomes expansive like the universe or the waters pushing friends over time zones, or the silence waging war on words desperately needing to be spoken, heard.

Sitting with friends of friends and friends over odds and ends, over last sips of whiskey and belly laughter, possibilities seem reachable and hopes seem connected and frustrations seem reasonable and injustices seem harrowing. 

But it is now shared. 

Shared among strangers strangely connected by that which we do our best sometimes to believe and our best other times to run like hell from. 

That thin and thick moment, then, the world is so small and so expansive and strangers make confidants, and space feels like home no matter where feet have landed. And life pounds maddeningly worthwhile and heartbreaking all in one sharp, softening, shared moment with friends.

One more tiny drink gets poured for everyone.

djordan

Belfast and Banbury

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Jun 25 2012
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learning to live, poems

thin of a second

it’s sometimes in the thin of second
you get a breath
a shove of breath into your gut
up into your head

it clears your mind for
only the thin of a second

and all is well
and you see the world as if through a glass clearly

then it’s gone.
but the second itself, the thin of it,
changes everything.

and your lungs take a bit deeper of a breath
and your head lightens briefly
lightens in weight and in brightness

and all will be well.

djordan
Pine Tree

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Jan 14 2012
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learning to live, Quotes

no time to grab a camera

There’s this clunky urge in me to always take a picture.

To try to capture a moment so that I can remember the smells and the moods and the words and the looks tied to it.

I’ve done it before in all kinds of places and at all kinds of times. The moment seems so absolutely perfect that I start fumbling through pockets or bags to find the right camera with the right setting at the right time in the right light to get it captured––stored––for later use.

It feels clunky. Like I’m crashing through the moment with some back-to-the-future kind of gear in an effort to trap its perfect mystery.

So that I can pull some more of the energy from it later on. Or the smell. Or the mood. Or the words and the looks.

But they were tied to the moment. And as the moment goes, so they go.

Quickly.

And then I find myself, after the moment…maybe days or weeks or years…wishing I had stopped my clunky fumble for a camera to capture something fleeting, but rather sat and enjoyed its fleeting nature when I realized the kind of moment I was in.

There’s a danger to trusting this kind of thin space, the moments when time and heaven and earth not so much collide together, but rather when our eyes suddenly notice that they’ve always been dancing together. In trusting the thin space, we have to only take from it what it offers us.

We have to trust what it will leave in us.

What it will do to us.

What it speaks to of a kingdom future for us.

There’s no trapping it for more of anything.

It comes.

And it goes.

A tide.

I had one of those moments last night: Sitting in the back yard eating a community-made meal, catching up over good wine with stellar people. I fought the grab-my-camera urge for about thirty minutes, and then the freedom of trusting the thin space found me.

I had one of those moments a week ago: Sitting on the stairs in a home eating a community-made meal, catching up over good wine with stellar people.

There are no pictures to take me back to either.

But both moments are faithful in what they have graciously offered to leave behind for me.

And I will trust that it was worth not grabbing the camera.

djordan
Cape Town

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