Give Us Time

Give us time might be another great prayer too.

For here on earth, there is not a lot else we have anyway.

Regardless of your money, or position or health – your time here is always depreciating in front of your eyes.

And I completely agree: Don’t blink.

You might miss something poignant and beautiful.

Thomas Merton wrote, in a light passage in one of his Gethsemane journals: “Suggested emendation in the Lord’s Prayer: Take out ‘Thy Kingdom come’ and substitute ‘Give us time!’” But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.

-Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek