Start Quote
Since the dawn of Time,
we've tried to understand her nature.
Why?
In order to control her.
But time is a holy mystery, an extravagant gift
meant to be experienced, not understood.
Certainly not controlled.
Why do you think we're crazed half the time?
Time's mystery is difficult...to appreciate
because we've so little of it.
Although we've all been allotted
twenty-four hours each day,
it doesn't seem to go very far.
So if we experience anything at all,
it's dread,
because we keep running out of time.
Again
and again...
For centuries those with time on their hands...
have pondered time's enigma.
They've discovered her duality.
As the sculptor and poet Henry Van Dyke explains:
Slow and swift are time's parallel realities,
the yin and yang of existence.
In order to know a semblance of serenity
during the days of our lives,
we also need to discover Time's twin nature,
which the ancient Greeks called
Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars,
agendas, planners, schedules, beepers.
Chronos is time at her worst.
Chronos keeps track.
Chronos is a delusion of grandeur.
Chronos is running the Marine Corps marathon in heels.
In chronos we think only of ourselves.
Chronos is the world's time.
Kairos is transcendence, infinity, reverence,
joy, passion, love, the Sacred.
Kairos is intimacy with the Real.
Kairos is time at her best.
In kairos we escape the dungeon of self.
Kairos is a Schubert waltz in
nineteenth-century Vienna with your soul mate.
Kairos is Spirit's time.
We exist in chronos.
We long for kairos.
That's our duality.
Chronos requires speed so that it won't be wasted.
Kairos requires space so that it might be savored.
We do in chronos.
In kairos we're allowed to be.
We think we've never known kairos, but we have:
when making love,
when meditating or praying,
when lost in music's rapture
or literature's reverie,
when planting bulbs or pulling weeds,
when watching over a sleeping child,
when reading the Sunday comics together in bed,
when delighting in a sunset,
when exulting in our passions.
We know joy in kairos,
glimpse beauty in kairos,
remember what it means to be alive in kairos,
reconnect with our Divinity in kairos.
So how do we exchange chronos for kairos?
By slowing down.
By concentrating on one thing at a time.
By going about whatever we are doing as if it were
the only thing worth doing at that moment.
By pretending we have all the time in the world,
so that our subconscious will kick in and make it so.
By making time.
By taking time.
It only takes a moment to cross over from chronos into kairos,
but it does take a moment.
All that kairos asks is our willingness to
stop running long enough to hear the music...
Today, be willing to join in the dance.
End Quote
And then of course this came up
on my Facebook feed today.
Funny how things work like that huh.
***
Gratitude Journal
***
1) Tender mercies. Chase came up to keep eating yesterday when we were at Mcdonalds and he climbed up on the bench, and started pooping. In his underwear. That was fun. I get home, and Robbie is still in a meeting so I am putting the kids to bed by myself...and after a no good very bad day they just went to bed. No more crying, no more yelling, no more fighting...just quiet. It's like God was saying good job, you survived this awful day, I think you need a break now.
They were so cute, "take my picture mom!"
This was before the poop.
2) Nanny 911.
3) Indy. I don't know how I could ever live this life without her.
4) My home. It's crazy how many people have lost their homes from the fires, the hurricanes, and all the other natural disasters. I'm so sorry for them, and I'm grateful for my home. It can be gone in an instant, and you don't ever think about that.
5) I'm getting pretty good at my new skill, mosquito killing.
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