On Time Unmeasured
and Soul Unplanned

I once took a walk into the Oxford countryside with my daughter, Lyric. She was seven. I don't remember the occasion. But we seldom needed one. I walked daily for the two years we lived there. And it changed my life. On this particular walk, Lyric and I talked the entire time about her imagination. At one point, when we crested the hill of the Seven Sisters and took a break to climb a low-limbed oak tree, she explained to me why climbing a tree was better for you than playing on a jungle-gym at the local park.

As we wound our way through the woods and across the hay field, aside the blackberry patch that grew on the side of a hill, we discussed how cloud shapes affect your imagination. Of course, we were not consulting a recent psychology study or the new research of neuroaesthetics. We were simply intuiting the physical world before us and pulling on thought threads as they emerged.

Lyric, who is 18 now, often recounts that walk. She refers to it as a "core memory." And neither one of us fully remembers our extemporaneously brilliant moments in the commentary. But we do remember the walk itself and the tree-climb, the blackberry patch, the fields and the clouds. England's clouds move like island clouds because that's what they are — I have to remind myself of that fact. One is always racing clouds. And that is not a bad thing. In fact, it is a very good thing. Our tree-climb-cloud walk does not remain in our memories because it accomplished any great thing. We did not "have to" walk. We did not time our walk or measure it in miles. Though, when I sit here and think on it, it was probably at least an eight mile walk. But we did not log it anywhere.

Lyric would tell you that she "loved" that walk. And so would I — a walk with no agenda, naked of ambition, full of surprise, and timeless. If I pressed you, you could probably recount a similar experience — some indelible moment with a friend or loved one you treasure. And if you pressed me, you would discover dozens of such walks — with a loved one, alone, at dusk, in rain, through snow, at dawn, under stars. And I'd tell you that the best things in life often happen in tree-climb-cloud moments of aimless happenstance. And those moments keep their patina the more one thinks about them, writes about them, and learns from them. Not a school-learning — such walks are not homework. But a different kind of learning. Lyric keeps the walk in her memory as core to her life, not because it helped her figure a life-cipher but because it figured her life.

In that sense, tree-climb-cloud walks teach us far better than new principles in neuroaesthetics. And maybe they don't teach us at all. Maybe they learn us. Maybe the landscape is telling the skyscape the mythology of Fathers and Daughters — a mythopoeia where the humans, through gesture, laughter, and thought give to the world of cloud and tree and peacock and fox, the delightful lesson of Nothingtime. A time unmeasured and unplanned, a time re-collected in other times, of tranquility and peace. There the trees and clouds learn of patience, grow sturdier with joy, and sing the virtue of holy participation. We, the myths of the Lord.

Ever since I sat down to write you this note I've grown more shy. How could I tell you all that sits on the tip of my pen?

And what of this mythos and its history? Slowly the hills and blackberry patches dig deeper, crafting theses and novels illustrating the profound impact Fathers and Daughters and Mothers and Sons enacted upon the earth. They are not the terra incognita but terra luminosita — the great human light (lucis), the splendor all living things hold their breath to see, hear, and touch. Even the rocks cry out in rhapsody, giving their petra-verse to interpret these creatures roaming the land with their souls ablaze, intuiting the mysteries with the angels search. The Logos itself, Jesus the Wise Architect, dances alongside Yahweh singing his delight in this new myth made of ancient thought, crafted with the richest philosophy, carved out of the marble of God's imagination.

And the woods would write treatises in honor of the great myths of the land, building constitutions from the universal virtues found in the bedrock of the human intellect. And all the leaves clap, marvelling how out of the simplicity of time spent came the strength to end wars and wisdom to cut new paths where the old ones had grown over.

Lyric would tell you there is power and mystery and beauty in a walk. All the land agrees.