There has always been a strangeness to this Decembering time of year when we say goodbye to the old year and ring in the new. The long, dark nights of Winter's cold and snow slowly beckon forth what will become the newness of green and Spring in a few short months. As we look backward on the happenings of the year, juxtaposed by our imaginings of the unknown thresholds we will traverse, I am struck by how often we limit ourselves by how we think of and relate to time. Most especially we do this, when we lock ourselves into taking time as a strictly, linear progression--where our days just mysteriously disappear into a vat of the past, behind us--gone--forever forgotten.
But is this Western mindset the only way to think of and relate to time?
Many more Eastern minded traditions relate to time in a more cyclical, repeating, way. In the Irish, Celtic tradition time is woven into:
the rhythms of nature, the moon cycles, the seasons, the comings and goings of the ocean's tides. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) the 5 elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water give way to each other, the death of one birthing the next in an interconnected pattern. Our physiology echoes these same repeating circular patterns and cycles in our circadian rhythm, fertility, the aging process, and even our heart's pumping of the blood--ever repetitious of the beat, around the giant blood vessel circuit of our bodies.
So why does it even matter in how we relate to time?
Our relationship with time affects our way of being in the world. For many of us, time itself has become toxic. It is difficult, perhaps impossible to exercise a healthy presence in our lives when we live in a linearly, perverted relationship to time--where time is the bully, the enemy, the thief that robs us of the wonder in our lives while we exist on some overly-fixated, historical timeline. Rather, a more healthy view of time according to John O'Donohue is time as the mother of presence: "Possibility is the secret heart of time. On its surface, time is vulnerable to transience. In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration." And while there can be different sorts of time or ways of being in time, few of us spend enough time in this version of this deeper way of being in it that has the power to transform us.
And yet, when I think of some of the most difficult experiences of my life, what is striking is the sense of having been in this slower, deeper time. Indeed, when we periodically inhabit this sort of time, the timeless poignancy of it, grounds us to the deep presence of our own souls. It is almost as though time has slowed down or even stopped. Sometimes the contrast of our existence in this sort of time doesn't occur to us, until we are jarred by encountering others not inhabiting this kind of time. I think of the shock of my brother's death and my incomprehension at how the world could keep moving on without him--without us. The Weepies' lyrics speak to this:
I let the day go by
I always say goodbye
I watch the stars from my window sill
The whole world is moving
And I'm standing still...
The night is here and the day is gone,
And the world spins madly on.
Sometimes we feel abandoned and lost in this slow time of pain and suffering, as Sarah McLachlan sings, "Time here, all but means nothing, just shadows that move cross the wall. They keep me company, but they don't ask of me, they don't say nothing at all." I recall listening to this song often when I was in the midst of my divorce grief. I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness that gutted me for too many nights in a row, as I sobbed into my couch. The pain felt blinding, even endless. And yet in that season of deep pain I experienced a greater intensity of presence in the people that met me there in that dark, cave like space. I felt truly seen, even in the midst of my horrific grief. That kind of deep presence in deep time slowly does its soul work on us, and we cannot remain the same, even if we somehow wanted to.
And so may you be challenged this year "To take time not as a calendar product, but actually as the parent or mother of presence, then you (will) see that in the world of spirit, time behaves differently." (John O'Donohue) Let's all lean in to transforming our relationship to and in time this cycle around the sun.
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