525,600 minutes

This weekend I went to see RENT at the Durham Performing Arts Center. It was a remarkable show. I have to say that I was surprised at how touched I was by the show. Tears came to my eyes several times during the second act. The show does time magic. The first act is about one Christmas Eve, the second act covers the following year. The second act opens with the song, Seasons of Love and asks us "How do we measure a year?" It is a good question to ponder in this day and time. How do we measure the passing of time? Is it really minute by minute? As witches, we measure time by the change of the seasons and the cycle that this creates year after year. We notice the sunrise, the sunset a way to measure the passing of time. Buddhists say each moment, each breath, is the present, and the lyrics of the song suggest that each moment is a journey. However, the song ends by asking us "How about measuring our life by the seasons of love?" How do you measure that? In a world of war, hunger, and hate, it seems nearly impossible to measure love this way. Yet, the hope that I have felt over the past week as things in this country have changed provide us with a new way of looking at the world. It is my hope that the shift I have felt with the Inauguration of President Obama is more than just a hope and my own projection. I believe that it is real and that it can make the question of how we measure love on the global and community level a bit easier to see. In the meantime, I still have to contemplate how I measure the seasons of love in my own life. Perhaps the answer lies in the closing song of the musical, No Day but Today.