HOLY IS THIS TIME - #2

In an earlier time, men reached into their vest pockets and displayed exquisitely designed pocket watches. Oftimes they coordinated their timepiece with the clocks that hung high, prominent fixtures in many of the elegant railroad stations of the nation. In an even earlier time, huge town clocks hung high on a church or town hall told time for everyone. What time is it? Chronological time has been the mode of time that many are accustomed to. Dawn and dusk, sunup and sunup and sundown, the moon and the stars, the tides of the oceans, dusk and bootblack, deepest night have accompanied peoples from the very beginning.

I first began to think about time when I read Mircea Eliade's short book, Cosmos and History, The Myth of the Eternal Return. This was one of the most important books I have ever read. It opened up a world to me that I had not previously known. Eliade was a Rumanian-American, Orthodox Christian living in Chicago. He studied and wrote about world religions and created a vision for the world. Ancient peoples, not surprisingly he said, thought of time in a cyclic way. The sun like a chariot appeared each day on the eastern horizon. It would then race across the dome of the sky until it sunk down deeply below the western horizon at the end of the day. Then it would speed its way across the dark underworld, from west to east, till it breathlessly reappeared again in the east. Such was the lot of the sun and of the ways the ancients thought of daily time.

Time was cyclic. It made its mark by repeating season after season. Spring gave way to the summer harvest. The harvest surrendered to autumn's splash of colors. Autumn sank into the death of winter. Winter eventually birthed another spring. This was the life of the cosmos for agrarian peoples in tune with the celebrations of the four seasons. These peoples celebrated their gods and goddesses, autumn festivals and spring feasts. As Eliade eloquently pointed out, something happened in history and a new viewpoint came to birth. Judaism and its offspring, Christianity, envisioned a cosmos made by a Creator who endowed the earth with seasons - and more. God created with a purpose and a goal in mind. Time was not just cyclical. It was linear. It had a beginning in creation. It had a Creator who endowed time with meaning and history with a purpose. The earth and its peoples mirrored a God of creativity and companionship. Several events were charged with meaning and purpose: original blessing was called creation, deliverance was called exodus, a second blessing was called promised land, prosperity and peace were called Israel, failure and tragedy were called exile, and return was called restoration.

In all these events God accompanied Israel. God gathered a rag-tag group of clan families, sealed the relationship with covenants that became Israel, and led them forward with purpose and destiny. Agrarian feasts mingled with temple sacrifice, blood rituals with incense pots, and ancient chants with lofty hymns of gratitude and praise. Israel learned the times and events that would be forever pivotal for their faith: creation, Passover, harvest festivals, and pilgrimages to sacred shrines and Jerusalem here and on high. In all this Israel told time, cradled meaning, and celebrated treasured and timely events.