This picture is a common representation of the gravity field of a black hole. I think the intention is to show that if you try to walk from east to west straight across the x-y "plane" at the top, you're going to fall into one of the biggest ant lion traps in the cosmos.
If we cut the tip off the sharp end of the hyperboloid, we get a cool funnel. You may have fed coins into one of those mesmerizing funnels where the coin rolls around and around faster and faster, in smaller and smaller orbits, until it plunks into a collection box at the bottom (ideally for charitable purposes).
I have recently decided that life is like the coin's trip down the hyperboloid funnel.
When I was not many years old, a year seemed just shy of infinitely long. Personal potential was so much greater than actualized personality. Birthdays and holidays took a long, long time to arrive.
As we age, the decisions we make and the roads we go down mean an infinite (that is, indefinite) number of choices and directions have been left behind. We become more and more Who We Are, and our orbits down the funnel become smaller and smaller.
Also faster and faster. Seems that way at least. "Age and age's evils" that Hopkins wrote about in his Leaden Echo suddenly surround and overwhelm us. There seems to be less and less time between Christmases. Church on Sunday keeps feeling like didn't we just do this a moment ago?
At my age I'm heading into those dizzying narrows.
Is there any way to focus, hold on, slow down? "Is there any, any, any...?," I ask with Hopkins. There's gratitude, for one. There's the kind of prayer that notices and memorializes moments of beauty. There is the calm that comes from making peace with the fact that some day we must surely die. And until that day, there's leaning on the everlasting arms of Jesus.
