Time is a constant in our lives, though it can feel malleable depending on our awareness of its presence. Getting older appears to be a time accelerant. Recent months and years bring urgency to where we discern ourselves to be in any one moment, leaving important questions in their wake, particularly how we intend to structure the remainder of our lives. We are not alone in this. My grandparents often pondered what a surprise it was to discover they were crossing into uncharted territory in their later decades. “I never dreamed I would ever be this old,” was a familiar mantra by the eldest family members.

The opposite is true of children. Time never seems to move fast enough. Patience in waiting for the next exciting event in their lives is a burden to their young spirits. Ask six-year-olds how old they are and you will likely end up with responses that include, “and a half” tacked to the back end. Six and a half is enormously more import than a pedestrian “six,” perhaps even on the edge of full-fledged personhood. For kiddos moving upward to the next grade levels, bus routes, favorite teachers, or longer recesses, waiting can be an eternity.

Then there is geologic time; a deeper steadier representation of creation that binds humanity to schedules and outcomes beyond our comprehension. We are distant observers in that regard, a celestial eyeblink lifted from the creation calendar, itself embedded with evolutionary promise. The scale is difficult to grasp. Its complexities are wrapped in mystery and largely unexplained. Which brings me to rocks.

Our garden paths are strewn with various stones of all stripes and sizes. Collecting them is often a simple matter of picking one up off the gravel road and adding to those already present. Some are from travel or friends or randomly discovered caches of one kind or another attached to fanciful sounding places with names like Ghost Ranch or Coyote, New Mexico. Some of the most interesting ones, those that raise deep questions regarding our place in the cosmos, are the stones that are perfectly shaped ovals or spheres, ones that have been formed in the rock tumbler of multiple ice ages advancing and retreating over millions of years. They are never dismissed lightly.

Petrified wood provides something more to contemplate; organic material mineralized into stone yet retaining many characteristics of its origins. Having once examined its features, it becomes quite easy to categorize. Plus, it makes for beautiful pieces when polished in a tumbler or when one face of a slab is hand finished to a mirror glass sheen. To hold a piece of petrified wood in your hand is a call for time awareness and appreciation for the divine forces that brought them to our attention. At age six and a half, waiting on a rock tumbler to work its long slow magic was a test of patience and endurance. Now at sixty-six and a half, little has changed except for a slightly more contained outlook on what creation has set before us. However, I reserve the right to use “and a half” at my discretion.