In an article in the
New Yorker Roger Rosenblatt writes about the death of his young daughter and how her family is dealing with the loss of a mother, wife and daughter. I was particularly taken with this piece of the article where he writes about the novel
Deaf Sentence
by David Lodge. The book is about a retired linguistics professor...
"Desmond Bates who is losing his hearing and who is also deaf to life until, against his will, he visits Auschwitz, where the silence teaches him to hear. He reads a letter from a prisoner in the camp to his wife, discovered in a pile of human ashes. One sentence rises up to Desmond: "If there have been at various times, trifling misunderstandings in our life, now I see how one was unable to value the passing of time."
Roger Rosenblatt writes:
"As far as I can tell, this is how to live - to value the passing time."
___________________________
Generally we are taught that time is valuable from an efficiency standpoint - we need to find ways to get more organized so we can get more done. Before we climb that ladder we should make sure it's leaning against the right wall. One way might be to reflect on the passage from
Psalm 90:
"So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart."
# posted by Jack @ 5:31 AM