The Times of Life
By CITAL Guest blogger: Dorothy Bass, Director, Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith
As we head into the busiest season of the year, we asked guest blogger Dorothy Bass to reflect with us about the times of our life.
So many of us yearn for lives that are balanced, but there never seems to be enough time.
Pressures are real. There is no denying that, especially at this time of year. However, worrying only about how much time we have can lead us to overlook the many and varied shapes time takes in our lives. And this oversight can add to our distress.
Time is not monochromatic. Each unit does not tick by with the same value and meaning as the others. Each of us lives by several calendars. We live in several kinds of time, each with its own pace, value, and structure. Consider these, for example:
The rhythms of nature. Night and day. Morning and evening. Winter, spring, summer, and fall, which take distinct and beautiful forms here in Northwest Indiana. How might honoring the transitions inherent in nature—daybreak, nightfall, seasonal change—help us to find our bearings as human beings and treasure the gifts of nature?
The rhythms of our bodies. Our bodies are part of nature and share in many of the rhythms just mentioned. We need rest each day; we rely on seasons as farmers bring forth food. And we have different family obligations and move at different speeds at different chronological points in life.
Internet time. This kind of time offers—and seems to demand—unceasing access to work, entertainment, shopping, and more. It runs 24/7/365. It provides some benefits (including some that are supposedly time-saving) but getting immersed in Internet time to too great an extent means missing out on the gifts of the other kinds of time listed here. Day? Night? What?
The academic calendar. Some weeks and months are overwhelmingly busy. Others provide respite, at least to most faculty and staff. Some weeks are full of hope and promise; others seem laden with worry and judgment; most are a mix of the two. When drowning in a difficult period (like the weeks between Thanksgiving break and first semester finals), it is easy to forget that academic time is cyclical and renewable.
Sacred rhythms. Religious traditions engage time in ways that mark certain seasons, days, and hours with special meaning. In doing so, they invite believers to step into a kind of freed time that is not bound by the exigencies of the Internet or the workplace. Christians are now in the season of Advent, a time of simplicity and urgent expectation when holy texts call us to “Stay Awake!” so that we can notice and prepare for God’s coming into this world. When Muslims are called to prayer five times each day, they acknowledge the supremacy of Allah in their lives. The most important rhythm of Judaism is shaped by the Sabbath, a weekly day of freedom marked by rest and worship. In these and other traditions, sacred rhythms summon practitioners again and again into heightened awareness of the presence of God.
What other ways of organizing time shape your life? Anniversaries? Sports seasons? Civic life? Visitation schedules?
Identifying these multiple calendars may at first glance seem to add more demands to our lives. But these calendars operate differently from the electronic ones that track obligations and sound alarms when a meeting is coming up. Sure, we need those calendars too. But the calendars I name above set our lives in richer temporal contexts, structuring time in ways that we did not ourselves create. As such, awareness of these rhythms can help us to be more aware of the gifts time brings. When one calendar overwhelms—perhaps the academic calendar just now?—pause to notice the beauty of daybreak or nightfall. Receive the simplicity of Advent as challenge and opportunity. Go to bed earlier as nights grow longer. And look forward in hope to other parts of each calendar, even the academic one.
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Dorothy Bass is the author of Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time ( http://www.amazon.com/Receiving-Day-Christian-Practices-Opening/dp/0787956473).
This week, she and other participants in the Lilly Fellows Program are reading together Abraham Joshua Heschel’s spiritual classic The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (http://www.amazon.com/Sabbath-Classics-Abraham-Joshua-Heschel/dp/0374529752).