Time.
It flies. It crawls.
We mark it,
waste it, bide it, and race against it.
We all have
the same amount of it each day, each week, each month, each year; but none of
us ever think we have enough of it.
We all use
it differently…and what we do with it helps define and direct our lives.
In
Thorton Wilder’s play “Our Town,”
Emily dies and is given the opportunity to relive one day of her life.
Against
the advice of those already buried in the cemetery, she chooses to go back to
her 12th birthday. She sees
the hustle and bustle, the baking of the birthday cake, the wrapping of
presents, and family members living in the same house but hardly noticing one
another. Finally, she cries out, “Oh
Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me…Just for a moment
now we’re all together. Mama, just for a
moment we’re happy. Let’s look at one
another.”*
Saddened by this experience, Emily returns to the cemetery with a new understanding of time. She says goodbye to clocks and all the things we do that are governed by clocks. She says, “Oh earth, you’re just too wonderful for anyone to realize you!” And she asks the play’s narrator, the Stage Manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?” And the Stage Manager says, “No…Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”
My advice about time in this blog-post? Try to be a saint or a poet...and realize this time in your life while you are living it.
Don't wait...
Don’t
wait until you finish school, Until you go back to school…
Until you lose ten pounds, Until you gain ten pounds…
Until you have kids, Until the kids leave the house…
Until you start work, Until you retire…
Until you get married, Until you get divorced…
Until Friday night, Until Sunday morning…
Until you get a new car or home, Until your car or home
is paid off…
Until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter…
Until you are off welfare…
Until the first-of-the-month, or the fifteenth-of-the-month…
Until your song comes on the radio, or your iPod…
Until you’ve had a drink, Until you sober up…
Until you die, Until you are born again…
Try to be a saint or a poet...and realize this time in your life while you are living it.
-The hands of a clock will find their
way home.
-This was true the moment (Father
Time) marked his first sun shadow…
-(And) every generation after…was
determined to sharpen (the) concept, counting ever more precisely the measure
of their lives.
Sundials were placed in
doorways. Giant water clocks were
constructed in city squares. The move to
mechanical designs – weight-driven – led to tower clocks and grandfather clocks
and eventually clocks that fit on a shelf.
-Then a French mathematician tied a
string to a timepiece, put it around his wrist, and (we) began to wear time on
(our bodies).
-Accuracy improved at a startling
rate. Although it took until the
sixteenth century for the minute-hand to be invented, by the seventeenth
century, the pendulum clock was accurate to within a minute a day. Less than one hundred years later, it was
within a second.
-Time became an industry. (We) divided the world into zones so that
transportation could be accurately scheduled.
Trains pulled away at precise moments; ships pushed their engines to
ensure on-time arrivals.
People awoke to clanging alarms. Businesses adhered to “hours of operation.” Every factory had a whistle. Every classroom had a clock.
“What time is it?” became one of the
world’s most common questions…
What time is it? Its NOW, that's what time it is.
Try to be a saint or a poet...and realize this time in your life while you are living it.
The
Jesuit tradition of "Examen"
offers some wonderful contemplative questions that can help us examine how we
are using our time:
In a place of solitude and silence
consider these questions:
1)
For
what moment today am I most grateful?
2)
For
what moment today am I least grateful?
3)
In
what moments did I sense God’s presence around me and in me?
4)
In
what moments did I fail to love?
Try to be a saint or a poet. Maybe its time.
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