Time Trials

Anyone who lives near Indianapolis where they hold the Indy 500 races knows about the time trials. Those are the races before the races, the qualifying runs to get into the main event. If a driver doesn't go fast enough, if his team isn't coordinated enough, if he doesn't make spectacular time, well, he just doesn't get into the main event. You have to be fast. Really fast.

Time trials for people of faith are different than that. Our race is not about being better than the guy next to us. Our time trials are more likely to be in the form of enduring a standstill, still hoping for great outcomes while endlessly waiting. The person holding a stopwatch is not the one who tells us if we are winning.  It's not about going fast. It's about going right. It's about fulfilling a call.

Yesterday a great man died, so very suddenly that it left those of us who knew him utterly stunned, even breathless. A fall down the stairs in a New York subway? Can such a thing really happen to someone so full of life, so needed in the world? The death of Jhan Moskowitz was reason to reflect again on the fragile brevity of life, given as a gift and gone in a moment. It was a reason to ask if our time trials were going well, because suddenly, so terribly suddenly, before we realize it we are heading down the last lap of the race. Surely at the end of it there will be few things that matter much to the people who remember us except for the good we leave behind. (Hopefully that is all they will remember!) For us who are artists it will also be our paintings. Things that capture the heart because of their beauty. Dinners in front of paintings about dinners millennia ago; Miracles that happened turning water to wine and miracles that didn't happen in a hospital in New York.

The racetrack isn't ours, the stopwatch isn't ours, but the race itself surely is. Wait well, run well so that you may win. Rest in peace, Jhan. You ran well.