Day Eighteen: Time

Word of the Day: Time

Image of the Day: candles - Carol Service at MCC. I was in Maine so Gail lit a candle for me as well as herself...

Token of the Day: stripey trainer liners (socks)


Gail writes: time - is it linear, is it now, is it everything, always, all things, all experience ... TIME.. now, then, when - TIME - past present future.....!?

There is time...take it

There is a time for everything... [Ecclesiastes 3] This passage of scripture is often quoted at weddings, funerals and other occasions but i'm not convince we really "get" it! The Byrds used the passage for their song "Turn! Turn! Turn! to everything there is a season" which is most often performed as a plea for world peace. For me it's a personal thing, something i have to "get" on an internal level if i'm to have any hope of influencing the world!

How often do i use the phrase: I've run out time or I don't have enough time or where did the time go. As if time were an object, a resource over which i have no control - like a tank of petrol with no cap on it. I think i believe in some bizarre way that i can actually manipulate time, magic extra time out of thin air! I can know that the bus will leave in 5 minutes and still believe that i can do something else before going out to catch the bus, leaving myself with zero or minus minutes to get there! I need to learn to both respect the time i've been allotted and also find time(!) to switch off from time-slavery, pauses for rest and renewal, opportunities to sigh and stretch and simply gaze at the sky. I have stopped wearing a watch and work at being mindful when on the way somewhere - mindful, fully present on the journey, enjoying the "time out"! I cannot make the traffic move any more smoothly, the bus stop less often, or the pedestrians sprawled across the pavement miraculously disperse to let the harried me through. What i can do is say Ok, God. I am here in this moment. What will i see? What can i learn? How can i use this as an opportunity to deepen my experience of You?

Today i didn't manage work but this did free me up to be available to chat on Skype with Alison and Mark in Australia, which was a real blessing. And it meant that i was able to summon up enough energy to present myself to my church committee to be interviewed to see if they would endorse my application to go forward in the ordination process for MCC. They have approved me and i will travel to Austin, Texas in June for a retreat. Time well spent! How many odd time-related sayings we have!

And what about telling time? What time is it? Do you have the time? Can you tell me the time? And we "tell the time" in different ways, some more accurate than others - but what is this accuracy? We use a 24 hour clock yet there are not exactly 24 hours in each day! Sundials and dandelion clocks, hour-glass and candle, egg-timer and incense have all been used to tell the time but not in a detailed-enough way for modern-day living. We, the 21st century beings, demand high precision time-pieces, without which we reckon the world would somehow just come to a halt. We run our lives by calendars, diaries, reminders, timetables (oh yes we're so precise with these!!! NOT!) and we now even have display boards at bus-stops for even greater accuracy to save us "wasting our time" waiting around doing nothing... Isn't that "being"? Back to our deep need for Buddhism again...

As Auden put it so beautifully:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone...
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Consider this: an emphasis on time in a dream may indicate a great deal of stress in the dreamer's life, perhaps the feeling that time is running out in either a business or a personal matter... Ever had that? Pay attention!

Time ebbs and flows
it rushes, river in full flood
it trickles, mountain stream in mid-summer
swirling in spirals
returning to its source.
Time never ends nor did it begin nor is it real.

Ordinary time is liminal,
in-between time
Our need for festival, celebration,
calendar event forces pauses in between
but it should more accurately be called
wonder-filled time
this waiting, preparing, wide desert time.

This is God's grace to us
sacred space, holy hiatus
when we must wait
and contemplate
and turn our souls to sacred clocks
which do not tick
or chime the hours
but simply hold all time together
and hand it out to those who sit
to those who sigh and simply ask.