“All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.”
Time is a funny thing. Its dispassionate march can be agonizing— the student eager for summer, the child impatient for Christmas morning, the slow mending of physical wounds. Yet, time can also be a comfort, its impartial advance serving as a kind of emotional healing, a gradual, medicinal erosion of our hurt, melting it away as icicles thaw in the morning sun.
As a (still ongoing and therefore late) Christmas present this year, I’ve been slowly digitizing and archiving an extensive collection of recently discovered Hi8 videotapes from my family’s old camcorder. Most of these videos, especially the earliest ones, probably haven’t been viewed since they were captured. Given the frequent inclusion of deceased family members as well as the glimpses of younger versions of loved ones (including significantly more adorable iterations of myself and my siblings), there’s an unsurprising poignancy to many of these tapes; I’ve lately found myself in exactly the right state of mind to be emotionally affected by this strange window into a past I don’t remember.
One tape contains a candid clip of my two-and-a-half-year-old self playing with my mother in the backyard. On display is an exercise in the simple repetitions toddlers love; I get a running start and leap towards my mother, who tilts backward as she catches me and leverages our shared momentum to lift me into the air before plopping me back down to run back and do it again. This wonderful clip, captured shakily from a distance (as my father struggles to hold the camera still with my infant sister wriggling in his other hand), is the absolute essence of innocent joy; just a mother enjoying the company of her son and a son who knows nothing of the world beyond the unwavering love of his mother.
I have no recollection of this day. My mother died more than five years ago and I cannot ask if she recalls it. This perfect little moment would be lost without memory were it not for my father’s camera. And even with it preserved, I can only share the camera’s perspective. Despite my literal presence within it, now my only participation in this moment is as a third-person observer, watching longingly from the back deck, 30 yards away and nearly 30 years removed.
The nature of time is my favorite existential topic to contemplate and I’m grateful that, in moments like this, reaching for a glimpse of time from God’s perspective gives me a hint of comfort. For me, the moment in that video isn’t even a memory, but for God, that moment is eternally present. The unbounded love reflected between my mother and myself eternally participates in the primordial trinitarian Love that it so fleetingly yet earnestly reflects. The radiant and wonderful aliveness of my mother, lost in my past, is a present reality to God, more real than it appears in this video, even more real than it appeared that day before my nascent eyes. Right now he watches her born into the world. Right now he sees her struggling with a high school anxieties. Right now he stands beside her as she commits her life to him. Right now he weeps with her over the loss of her father. Right now he watches my father sit beside her on an airplane, determined not to leave it without her number. Right now he holds her hand as she pushes me into the world. Right now he holds my hand as I watch her leave it. Right now I see through a glass dimly, the present reality of my mother’s love only visible to my eyes through the grainy recollection of a Hi8 videotape, but someday I shall see face to face. Right now my love is partial, my grief is partial, my memory is partial, but beyond this fallen time there is the Full.
Tonight, we celebrate time’s passing. The cyclical rebirth of the new year provides a liturgical rhythm for even the most secular among us. As December winds down we reflect on the year past, as January springs forth we charge headlong into soon-to-be-abandoned resolutions, and as June inevitably ambushes us we marvel at how fast the year goes by. Our place in time is a constant— the best and worst days are both 24 hours long. Our anxiety about the future never hastens its arrival and our longing for the past never brings it any nearer. Our “now” is limited: a sum of what came before and an open question as to what could be next.
But even within our limitations, we catch glimpses of the truer, fuller story. The eternal instant seeps into the framework of linear time, revealed in ephemeral impressions through art, grief, and most of all, love. God is Love, after all, so every participation in the divine is a participation in Love.
Grief has been my great teacher of this lesson, and I return again and again to the quiet comfort of how it is but a temporary participation in the Full. My heart, even the damaged parts, is indescribably brimming. In time, the grief that rends it in two expands its capacity, transmuting into a bittersweet experience of love— where the pain remains, but the love at its source becomes visible again.
Likewise, my other great teacher of this lesson has been marriage. My love for my wife grows year after year, surpassing what I thought was my capacity for such things and suffusing every expression of affection with fresh fullness. My love for my friends and family is more whole and true and genuine because of my love for my wife, and my love for my wife is made more precious by my love for those I’ve lost. And I know this extends forward: the love that ebbs and flows with me in time is already a present reality for my children who I have yet to meet, dear ones I have yet to lose, friends I have yet to make, and hurt I have yet to forgive. Our hearts are an Ouroboros: grief consumes love, love breaks free and envelops grief in turn, and around and around we go, laughing and weeping and munching on our tails.
Tonight, as we celebrate the passing of another year, we will observe the cherished customs. We will drink champagne, we will bang pots and pans, we will watch a gaudy display taking place in Times Square. Some of us will make resolutions that change our lives, some of us will make resolutions and not act on them at all. Some of us are headed for our best year ever, some of us will spend most of this year wanting it to be over. Many of us will remark on how fast the year went, even though it passed just as steadily as every year before it. And then come the stroke of midnight we will count down the final seconds of 2024, everyone will cheer, I will kiss my wife, and for a brief moment we shall experience, in that evanescent gesture of love, the simultaneous jubilation of living in the moment and partaking in eternity.
“We could say more but could never say enough;
let the final word be: ‘He is the all.’”
Benn, what a beautiful piece you’ve gifted us today. I remember countless moments like that one in the video of your mom with you, Emmy and Sam. Oh how she loved you and loved being a mom. Your words about grief are particularly poignant to me this last day of 2024, having lost my sister in law and my father this year. As I seek moments of light in the darkness and glimpses of joy amidst the pain, I cherish your words. My own experience with grieving your mom has been tumultuous and more painful than I ever imagined. But I’ve learned, as you have that love and grief are intimately intertwined and that there is One whose perspective we cannot possibly know earth side. As I’ve wrestled with these topics I have come to cherish the people around me more than ever - a lasting gift of loss. Happy New Year Benn, may 2025 be gentle with our hearts and may we be bold in how we love.
Thank you for writing truth with such beauty. As so many of us who love you, I am grateful that I remember you as a babe in the arms of your lovely mom, as a small boy, as a slightly bigger boy singing the 1st verse of Once in Royal David's City, and on through the years full of joy and grief. Thanks be to God who teaches us and heals us through our memories and through our grieving. May this year hold wonder for you.