Burn What You’re Given.

Do I Need Time?

Only long enough to love what’s before me.

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I. The Stone That Laughs

There’s a cemetery near our house where the stones tilt as if listening.
Most are polished rectangles that do their quiet work—names, dates, a verse if the family had one.
But one refuses to behave: a granite suitcase by a pond where ducks hold committee.
Across its side, a mason with a grin left three words: HIS LAST TRIP.
The joke outlived him.

Kierkegaard said cemeteries are for the living.
Standing there with my hands in my pockets, I felt the chisel’s laugh in my ribs and asked,

Do I need time?
Only enough to unpack what I’m still carrying.

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II. Hallway Heartbeat

At times I’m posted to the hallway—fifty-five minutes of watchful quiet that never arrives.
Fluorescents buzz. A bathroom breathes bleach.
Between bells the corridor becomes a current: coats, voices, sneakers squealing like gulls.
Students pass—some with permission slips, some with stories that need more mercy than policy.

I draw to keep from hardening: a sneaker’s pivot, a shoulder turning back for one last word,
a hand covering a tired face. The page looks like chaos, but it’s rhythm—time refusing to sit still.

Once, a girl stopped in the doorway.
“Mr. Graf,” she said, “your room’s the only place I don’t feel invisible.”

That line was worth more than any paycheck.
It reminded me that teaching isn’t about minutes; it’s about seeing.

Wilder once asked if anyone truly realizes life while they live it—every, every minute.
I fail that test more often than I’d like,
but for fifty-five minutes at a time, I get another chance to notice.

Do I need time?
Only enough to witness what’s already here.

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III. River Lesson

August returns unscheduled hours.
We go to Hartung Park, where the river remembers itself around stones and reeds.
Henry and Lucy wade in barefoot, nets lifted—to catch what moves, then let it go.
Crayfish skitter. Minnows spark like small lights.
No one’s counting. They aren’t managing time—they’re meeting it,
fully, freely, as if the river itself were teaching them how to live.

Gilgamesh once crossed worlds to beg for immortality
and received a flood story instead—perhaps the gift was learning
that eternity isn’t beyond the river but within it.
Rumi said, Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
The water still trades in that currency.

Sometimes I catch myself in the act—holding a burning now,
cupped like a small flame, hoping it gives off enough warmth
for whoever happens to pass close.

Do I need time?
Only the kind that moves, and carries light with it.

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IV. The Name and the Flame

Later I circle back.
HENRY BECKMAN. 1858–1909.
Fifty-one trips around the sun and one stone bright enough
to make a stranger smile a century later.
Legacy isn’t what you finish; it’s the question you leave with the living.

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Between stone and flame, fifty-one years become a single held breath.

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At home, a tea-light burns on the counter.
The flame doesn’t ask for a longer wick; it burns what it’s given.
Paul held two truths in one breath—
to live is Christ, to die is gain.
Time is the mercy between them.

The flame teaches the answer:
give what you cannot keep,
and the giving becomes the keeping.
I’ll hold mine as long as I can, and pass it on.

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Benediction

I don’t need time the way I once did.
I need the discipline to use what’s given—
to honor God, steady the heart,
and make the next breath a prayer of gratitude.

Each moment is a small mercy—
a chance to live fully present,
quietly useful,
deeply awake.

And when your own bag closes,
may the light you held be enough
to help another find their way through the dark.

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Tags: #Presence #MercyBetweenBreaths #LiveTheGiven #Formation #Teaching #Faith #Mortality #Art #Parenting