"Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing." ~ Miles Davis
Last Friday was a very ordinary Friday but a day that revealed two very different versions of time.
Version number one:
I’m stuck in the waiting area at the Honda dealership to get an oil change and that oil change turned into a transmission and brake fluid change. And one hour’s worth of work turned into three plus hours.
I enjoyed a nice burst of productivity for about an hour and half but then it became purgatory-like and the minutes became hours. The minutes turned into decades.
Version number two:
By noon, I finally get the car back in time to make it to my 1pm meeting with Matt. Matt lived in a dorm in the middle of the hallway and I at the very end of the second floor of Wright Hall during the 96/97 school year of Huntington College. We knew each other’s name and that was about it. But in the past five years we began to connect and strongly resonate with one another via social media and as Matt planned to visit Colorado for vacation, we scheduled some intentional time to connect. Right off the jump, we connected so easily and on so many different aspects of life. It was a wonderful two and half hour conversation that felt like it lasted 15 minutes.
Time behaves like that. Usually, we live out of version one or finite time. But on occasion we unexpectedly slip into version two - infinite or sacred time.
It's so difficult to see that other version of time because our economy and culture operates on the fuel of speed within the realm of the finite. In this realm, time is money and words like “efficiency,” “bottom line,” and “productivity” are the common vernacular and the idea of any form of waiting is to be avoided at all cost.
It’s hard to see beyond the confines of capitalism in this finite and competitive dimension. It makes the restrictions placed on us by a pandemic feel absolutely impossible. It causes fractured relationships to feel beyond repair. Within this dimension of time resolution, healing, or reconciliation should materialize asap or it’s never gonna happen.
With all this in mind, I’ve recently returned to an ancient story in the book of Genesis. The story follows the life of a man who grows up in a very blended and very dysfunctional family of origin. The man, whose name is Joseph, has the ability to move in and out of sacred time and the reader recognizes this through Joseph’s own special visions and his ability to interpret the special visions of others.
In living with this unique way of seeing, Joseph seems to hear and accept a divine message that goes like this, “It’s just not time yet.”
In the story, Joseph has visions that make no logical sense within the realm of finitude.
His first vision makes no sense in the moment, makes him look like a pretentious tool, and places him in bad standing with his family. That vision would eventually become a reality but not until 25 meandering years after receiving it.
It wasn’t time yet.
He remains open to these wild visions. He’d have another one that would help him interpret Pharoah’s vision but that one, regarding a coming famine, wouldn’t make sense until 7 years down the road of finite time.
It wasn’t time yet.
The busted relationship between he and his brothers created an intense longing within the family for healing and reconciliation but the healing wouldn’t happen until 30 years after the initial fracture.
It just wasn’t time yet.
More often than not the thing we want to see resolved or healed doesn’t happen when we think we want it to and sometimes we consider it a lost cause when in reality, it’s. just. not. time. yet.
13.8 billion years ago is the approximate age of our universe.
4.5 billion is the approximate age of our planet.
But in terms of us humans showing up on the scene, up until about 300,000 years ago there was a lot of “it’s just not time yet.” In other words, in regard to infinite sacred time, our species just showed up a few seconds ago.
So, we hold these longings - these aches.
For a cleaner earth.
For healing of deep social wounds.
For our minds to no longer be pre-occupied with the threat of a virus.
And perhaps above all, for personal fractured relationships to be mended and sewed back together.
Stepping back and stepping toward sacred time allows us to see and experience divine provision even in the midst of famine, chaos, and crisis.
So, some of the questions were left with go like this:
- Can we trust that there’s another dimension of time beyond just the finite urgency of the moment?
- Can we see divine provision now in this unimaginable moment of chaos?
- Can we, like Joseph, trust the reality that there’s always more to the story?
In sacred time, there's always more to the story.
Ryan a poem of mine came to mind as your thoughts and the fine quotes in the sidebar
blessed my day..
Thank you for being the Tall Monastic Guy
Peace and Play, Kevin Cray
Time Zones
Creation has is consequences
Love's litter can be bitter
When a memory masks the present
With pains from the past.
Yet to miss that mind's eye view
Is to miss the golden hue of your hair
In the beach-lit noonday sun listening
To the ocean roar.
Now old with the decades of linear time
I move into the country of vertical time
To be present, past and future in one breath.
Posted by: Kevin Cray | August 14, 2021 at 02:50 PM