Deep Time

This weekend in Austin I've experienced two different examples of "Deep Time" - time that seems deeper than time:

The first was lighting the Shabbos candles with my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. It was my five-day-old granddaughter's first Shabbos. We had set up the candles and suddenly, just before lighting, daughter Shael realized that from now on she'd be lighting a third candle. We quickly found a candleholder. Shael and Tom took their two lit candles, joined them so there was one flame, and lit the new candle for Lily. This was such a beautiful, spontaneous, poetic embodiment of this once-in-a-lifetime moment. Time beyond time.

The next was a different kind of deep. We went to see the bats fly out from under the bridge in Austin. Millions of bats. Hundreds of people hanging out, waiting to share a natural spectacular. Familes. Friends. All of us standing in awe as the bats in their millions made mad patterns in the growing dusk. On the way back, the parking lot guard stopped us to point out a nutria lumbering across the driveway. That moment of contact with him and his sense of wonder put me right back into Deep Time.