I indulge my short attention span

Last night before bed I washed the little case that I keep my earplugs in and set it down next to the sink. When I woke up this morning, it was still too dark to see in the bathroom with the light off. I took my earplugs out, walked into the bathroom, and put my hand exactly where the case was, no feeling around for it, but reaching out and grasping it just as if it were broad daylight. I was surprised I even remembered exactly where I put it, let alone that I could put my hand directly on it without even seeing it. Our bodies are incredible.

I’ve been reading the book “Emotional Intelligence”. It talks about how the immune system learns and adapts just as the brain does. I would have thought that the immune system was controlled by the brain, but apparently they’re two different systems, so much so that the discovery that they are actually connected in some ways was newsworthy.

For the past year and a half or so, I have been blogging less. I don’t know why. I’m not having ideas, and when I have them I have trouble writing them down. That’s also about the time I changed jobs. Since then I seem to have a shorter attention span. Hence this rambling from one topic to another. It seems to be the only way I can write more than a paragraph at a time.

This morning while praying the rosary I experienced a sort of timelessness. I don’t mean anything mystical, just that the usual time pressure that I feel was absent. Usually from the time I wake up until I go to bed, I’m feeling the pressure of too many things to do and not enough time (as everyone does, I assume). Even when I’m relaxing, or trying to relax — which, believe me, I do enough of — I’m still feeling time pressure. But this morning, possibly because I woke up so early, I had the sense of there being plenty of time. With my windows open to let in the cool morning air, I could hear the mourning doves cooing back and forth outside, in stereo, one on the left and one on the right. I could hear my son stirring in his bedroom next to mine, then settling back down. My wife outside turning the water on and off to water her “pets”, which is what she calls her plants. I have things to do today, but if I don’t get started for an hour or two it will be fine. So these next two hours, and especially the next 20 minutes or so while praying the rosary, are pressure-free. I can meditate and pray and praise God for the cool breeze through the window, my healthy wife and her healthy plants, the birds cooing and chirping, my son enjoying a late sleep on a Saturday morning.

This is one thing that I think will be precious to me in heaven — no time pressure. Plenty of time to meditate and praise God without the feeling that I’m neglecting other things. The one thing necessary.

Some Mormons have told me that they believe heaven will not be a static state, not a place of rest and timelessness but of continued activity, continuing marriage and being given in marriage, continued child-bearing and raising of a sort, continued striving for this goal or that, and even worrying and suffering. If it’s all these things, I can’t help thinking that there must be time-pressure as well, or at least the potential for it; more things to do than there is time in the day. If not, why not?

In the traditional concept of heaven, our peace and happiness have a source: our spiritual union with God. God being eternal and infinite, we can enjoy timelessness to our heart’s content. We don’t have to be anywhere or do anything, since there’s nothing that will wither and die without our attention, like our plants or our pets, our children or our car. If my meditations are fruitful — and they will be — I can feel free to continue in them for the next 20 minutes, or hours, or years, without anything else suffering from my lack of attention.

This evening we’re having my Mom and her boyfriend over for a late Mother’s Day brunch. It’s neither Mother’s Day nor brunch since it will be at dinner time. We don’t take my Mom out for brunch on Mother’s Day, since the restaurants are crazy crowded. Instead we invite her over and cook for her, which she likes since she prefers home-cooked food anyway. We postponed it this year since we were out of town on the actual Mother’s Day, attending my son’s graduation from college. If I don’t stop this scribbling pretty soon, I won’t have time to change the spark plugs on my car, balance the checkbook, and go to the store to buy some good Irish whiskey to serve before or after dinner. Things will suffer. There are limits. In heaven at last we’re spared from limits, at least as regards time and things suffering and decaying.