Between the Times in the Now

 Friends,  

It’s that time of year when people do one of two things. One can look back at 2023 and offer a “year in review” perspective or one can look forward and guess what’s in store for 2024. Or both. Our Commission and Deacons are already in the process of putting together our “year in review,” which we call our Annual Report. And while our culture is obsessed with predictions of all kinds – market projections, sports gambling, forecasting election results, or declaring the end times – I’ve always been cautioned by Robert Heilbronner’s distinction between describing trajectories and predicting results. 

 

For me, this is the time of year when I think about time. Particularly, I think about how elusive the present can be. The kind of thinking that goes into reflection – as we look at the past with regret or joy – requires being ‘outside’ of the past in order to look at it. And the kind of thinking that goes into prediction – from anticipation to dread – likewise requires being ‘outside’ of the future in order to imagine it. The present, however, is a different matter. The present is for living, experiencing, engaging, or simply being. I saw a photo of a person last week on a boat when an orca came up alongside of it. An orca. How often do you come face-to-face with such a creature? What a gift it would be simply to watch, take it all in, wonder, be amazed, live that astounding moment. Instead, she turned her back to the orca – turned her back to the orca! - and was engaged in trying to line up a selfie. While we are necessarily outside of the past and the future, we have become adept at finding ways to distract ourselves and to be outside of the present. I think that’s a shame. 

 

I wonder if the elusiveness of the present is what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he would speak of time. Think of his phrase, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” which he uses to describe that moment of transformation from earthly struggles to resurrected life. The word translated “moment” is atomos. It is only used here in the New Testament and, as you can see, is the etymological root for the word “atom.” The prefix ‘a’ means ‘not’ and the root ‘tomos’ means to cut or divide. It is an attempt to name the smallest indivisible amount of time possible that one cannot divide any smaller. (Smaller, even than an atto-second, which is a billionth of a billionth of a second, according to recent Nobel Prize winning scientists.) And the phrase “twinkling of an eye” is like a blink. You’ve already blinked many times while reading this essay, but it has happened so fast that you haven’t even noticed it and it has not interrupted your concentration. Paul is trying to name that infinitely small amount of time as a way of speaking of how God works. And that infinitely small amount of time is what we mean by “the present.” It is, by its very nature, elusive. The moment we become mindful of it, conscious about it, reflective on it, it has passed. The only choice for the present is to live it.

 

So, we are at that moment when we look back at 2023 and look forward to 2024. It is right to reflect, and it is wise to plan. But in so doing, I hope and pray that we are not distracted from actually living in the present. In this moment, this twinkling of an eye, God is. And so are we.

 

Mark of St. Mark