It's early morning and a white mist hangs down through the forest canopy. Yesterday through the trees I could see the shape of a hill rising up from the other side of the creek below. Now only the sound of water assures me the creek is still there, but the hill beyond has disappeared under the shroud of clouds. There is an eeriness as the light tries to squeeze through the greyness, and beyond the closest trees I can only see shadows of forest giants reaching up into nothingness.

Time seems to stand still in the silence. There is no sign of God's celestial time-pieces, the sun, the moon or the stars, pacing across the heavens. They have all been hidden behind the clouds that have left their comfortable positions in the blue sky and come down to rest gently on the forest floor spreading their dampness over the grassy hillside. Has time stopped, or is the sun still measuring the movement of the earth up above this white world of mist? It hardly seems to matter. All those things that seemed so important, even urgent, have melted away and all that's left is now.

Why was I so anxious, so stressed that things weren't happening when I expected them to happen? The deadlines, the expectations, the demands of life were constantly driving me, pulling me along, giving no time to stop and rest and reflect. The higher my expectations the greater the frustration when things didn't work out, when others didn't do it the way I wanted, or results weren't achieved in my time. The watch on my wrist, the booming grandfather clock in the hallway, the electric clock on the wall, the jangling alarm by my bed, the reminder on the radio every hour, the red digital symbols on the dash board of the car, all drive me on demanding, expecting, rushing, grasping.

In the quietness of the mist nothing seems important except beauty. My sense of time has been swallowed up by the cloud and patience has descended on my drivenness.