My Time is Not God’s Time

I am at a point in life when I take six pills each day – some are by prescription and some are vitamin supplements.  Some time ago I decided to swallow – not one of the pills in this case – but my pride and admit that it would be easier to have one of those seven day containers for my pills as I didn’t always remember if I had taken my pills or not – perhaps there is a pill for that but it is not on my list of pills.  In any case I recharge the daily pill container on Friday’s – nothing significant about the day but it is just when I do it.  It used to be Thursdays but I forgot to take them one day a while ago so it became Friday proving even a good system is not foolproof. 

Well, I am telling you this because I am always amazed when Friday rolls around and it is time to recharge the pill container.  How could a week have gone by so quickly?   A long, long, time ago in a land fairly far away when I was a child, a week seemed interminable.  I remember saying to myself at one point, I hope the weekend would last forever so I wouldn’t have to go back to school–being the kind of child who seemed to be out of sync with school and never in the right place in my learning experience – but that is a story for another day.  In any case the week at school did seem to last forever. 

Time does seem to be very flexible and stretches out or shrink in my experience.  I was at the Long-term care yesterday to do an Anglican worship service for the residents.  Visitors have to have a COVID test which requires waiting for fifteen minutes to get the results.  Another visitor remarked that this period was always the longest fifteen minutes of her life.  I was going to mention that it didn’t seem as long as the two minutes of silence on Remembrance day which I used to have to count out when I presided at Remembrance Day Services.  This, of course, has nothing to do with it not being significant – just the opposite.  Every second of that silence holds deep significance. But I didn’t get the chance as the staff person gave us the all clear and I headed off to the gathering congregation.  Time does seem to be flying by these days but it couldn’t be that I am getting old - can it?

Time flows on and there seems to be no stopping it.  As the Joni Mitchell song says, “it won't be long now, till you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”  

When we move into timelessness and eternity we are moving from our time to God’s time.  Some time ago, I listened to recordings of Northrop Frye’s lectures on the Bible and Literature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Swyk_ZRy8.  He notes that the creation story in Genesis did not happen in linear time, it happens in God's time.  In effect, it is a timeless event which is happening all the time. 

As Frye notes, the Bible speaks of time in two different ways; time is either Kairos or Chronos.  Simply put, Chronos is measurable time which has a beginning and an end.  Kairos, on the other hand, means an opportune time, a moment or a season such as harvest time.  St. Paul uses Kairos in the passage from Ephesians 5:15-16, “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  

If you have ever been caught in a moment when time seemed to stop or disappear, you have moved from Chronos to Kairos.  We need to be aware of when we want things to happen on our schedule, in Chronos and become aware that they sometimes happen in Kairos.  It is a reminder that as much as we like to believe it, we don’t often set the agenda.  That can be frustrating but it can also be liberating.

May you be blessed on your journey to experience it In Kairos and well as Chronos.           

An All-Embracing Perfection

Last week, I came across a couple of things which addressed the desire which we have for perfection.  Psychologically and culturally, we are averse to making mistakes.  We want to go through life with nothing but wins rather than losses.  We want to be right rather than wrong – we want to be perfect.  This, of course, is impossible and it probably would not be a great or even good way of being even if it were possible.  The first thing that came to me was one of the offerings by the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE) which sends out a daily short reflection, Brother Give Us a Word.  The word that was given to me was Failure:

Remember that your weakness doesn’t disqualify you from God’s love, but instead opens the way for God to act in and through you. Let your failures or your fears remind you of your need to rely on God for all things. God’s strength is made perfect in your weakness.  Br. David Vryhof, SSJE

The second offering to me was an interview on CBC Radio.  The interviewee was a scientist – unfortunately I didn’t get his name.  He was speaking about the development of vaccines and the criticism that some people had for the changes in advice that was given during the COVID pandemic by officials.  He noted that science makes progress by making mistakes.  My understanding of what he was saying is that if a hypothesis is proven not to be true, that is a step forward in scientific knowledge.  A quick Google search produced the following applicable quote by Paulina Kuo, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)., “Making errors in science is just part of the process and allows scientists to learn and broaden what we know. It’s only by being wrong that we ever learn what’s right.”

We are given many messages in our culture that mistakes are not okay.  We often see people honoured for what they have accomplished but there may be no mention of the challenges that they have had in accomplishing what they are being honoured for including the mistakes they have made.  There seems to be a greater tendency to knock people from their pedestals when past mistakes are revealed.  Acknowledging them and asking for forgiveness doesn’t cut it anymore.  Even Jesus seems to support the drive for perfection. An alternative to being perfect was offered in a little book I came across some years ago - A Prayer for the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz.  This little gem is a translation of The Lord’s Prayer and other sayings of Jesus from Aramaic sources.  One of the passages that the book addressed was from the Gospel of Matthew (5: 48).  This is traditionally translated as ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’.  However, the translation by this author is, ‘Be all-embracing, as you heavenly Father is all-embracing.” 

This passage and similar ones direct Christians to seek perfection and the understanding of God, as all good.  I could not reconcile them with my understanding of humanity as creatures of God, created in the image of God.  This new translation reconciled that dichotomy for me.  This enables me to reconcile these passages with my understanding of the human psyche.  We are to seek wholeness not perfection.  To quote my all-time favourite song writer and philosopher, Leonard Cohen,

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in

I will continue to offer my imperfect offerings to the source of my being which desires my wholeness and not my perfection. My you also be so blessed on your journey. 

Whose Side - Really?

I was surprized and a bit shocked last week, to realize that I was not aware of a Bob Dylan song.  Now, I am not a great fan of Bob Dylan but a fan of his music.  Indeed, one of my earliest ventures into solo performing in public was to sing Blowing in The Wind in a Kiwanis Festival when I was about 12 years old.  I am pleased to announce that I won first place in my class.  Impressive until you realize that I was the only entry in the class – but first place is still first place.

In any case, I grew up in the sixties when it was the golden age for folk singers and songs in the popular music scene.  I was a big fan of folk music and paid a lot of attention to all the popular folkies such as Peter, Paul and Mary; Leonard Cohen; Gordon Lightfoot; Cat Stevens; Joni Mitchell; Joan Baez.  Of course, Bob Dylan was right up there with the best of them.   So, it was truly a surprize when I discovered what was a popular Dylan song from that era that I didn’t know about.  That song is With God on Our Side.

After some extensive investigation – actually putting the song into Google - I found out that it was on Dylan’s ground breaking 1964 album, The Times They are A-Changin’, which included such folk classics the title song, North Country Blues, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, and Only a Pawn in Their Game, among others.  There was a definite theme of social justice and protest in the songs on the album which, of course, caught the essence of that era.

With God on Our Side certainly fit right in with that theme.  To quote that great all-knowing source, Wikipedia:  

The lyrics address the tendency of Americans to believe that God will invariably side with them and oppose those with whom they disagree, thus leaving unquestioned the morality of wars fought and atrocities committed by their country.

 The lyrics are quite extensive so I won’t quote them all here – here’s a link if you are interested and I would certainly recommend checking them out https://www.google.com/search?q=bob+dylan+song+with+god+on+our+side+lyric.  I will give you a taste of the essence of the song with a few verses:

The Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now, too
Have God on their side

I've learned to hate the Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side

You can see from this that not a lot has changed since then as we are learning to hate the Russians again due to the war - sorry “special military operation” in the Ukraine.  I must admit it is hard not to slide into the belief that God is on the side of the Ukrainian people and those who support them.  But it is a slippery slope as Dylan points out in the song. 

I was particularly taken with the last two verses of the song which brought the dangers of this home to me and the hope that we is certainly cling to today:

Through many a dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ was
Betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
That if God's on our side
He'll stop the next war

 Perhaps, instead of thinking that God is on our side we should be trying our best to be on God’s side.  Thoughts for your journey – blessings.