An episode of On Being that was inspired by James Prosek asked the question: What activity gives you the sense of “standing in a stream of timelessness?”
This is part of their “Summer of The Pause.” The host of their Poetry Unbound podcast, Pádraig Ó Tuama, writes that “Rather than going for the high moment of drama, the high moment of the erotic, the high moment of the extraordinary, poetry will choose the small moment of pause just to look at what’s really happening, to look at a few layers deep and to let that small pause, that ordinary moment, open up with all the fullness of its being to us.”

I haven’t had a “pause project” this summer. James Prosek is an artist, fly-fisher, author, and environmental activist who has always, as he puts it, “found God through the theater of nature.” My theater of nature might be my frequent walks in the woods, working in the garden, sketching and painting, or writing in my journal. But are those pauses? Am I standing still in the stream? Maybe it was standing in a field of lavender in Provence with my wife this summer, or sailing down the Rhône River and just watching a world I’ve never seen before pass by.
The site invited people to share their #StreamOfTimelessness from summer with a short video or photo on Instagram. I took a look there trying to figure out how people interpreted the pause and standing in the stream of timelessness. This one makes some connective sense to me – though I still don’t know what is my answer to their question.