It’s a Question of Time
The Bookends of Existence
Listen Here- Podcast Version
Are we what we do with time, or are we what time does with us?
Mahmoud Darwish
Time
Chronos
With her we spend our lives
Although we are not buying
For she is free
Nonetheless
never to be possessed
Once she leaves
she cannot come back
All the same she remains
forever present
To give of her
is the most precious of gifts
Yet she is the greatest of thieves
Not for a moment to be caught
Looking forwards we illusively try
to overtake her
Continuously looking backwards
to remember her
She stares back from the mirror
Our wrinkles
quietly whispering
her name
© Jamie Millard
Time! What is time?
Chronos was the primordial god of time to the ancient Greeks. Chronos is the root for chronology. It refers to measured, ticking, quantitative time. Chronos is the forward propelling time that we measure with clocks, on watches, by the evolutionary phases of the moon and in the curiosity of science.
I stare into the mirror every morning. I smile blessed with another day, amazed at the expanding web of creases that accompany the smile at the edge of my eyes and at the crescent of my mouth, nose and lips. This journey of existing in a body over time greets me yet once again. The questions accompanying the crow’s feet arrive as Socratic wisdom in the awareness of recognizing my own ignorance.
Is time out of mind or is it of soul? Can time exist independently of consciousness? Is time a physical dimension or a spiritual one? Do both dance the Sirtaki of the moment with Zorba? We are told that time is wasted and time is lost. That time passes, time is spent and time is not yet had. Is time alive? Can we touch it? Does time age or decay? One day we all will ask, where has the time gone?
The more we understand time, the more we find that it is time that makes us uniquely human.
Michio Kaku
Physicists tell us time is the progression of events from the past to the present into the future. Time is a quantum atomic relative linear bow that strings an arrow thermodynamically forward as a flowing river of whirlpools that spin and turn time over onto itself and into itself to form more rivers that distort with space, move mountains, turn rock to sand and roll into an eternal fractal pretzel. Some physicists even say that time is an illusion. It is the fourth dimension beyond length, width and height and is married with space to become the pull of gravity that moves stars.
Is time just memory? Are past and future different from each other or are they the same thing, even interchangeable? Neuroscientists tell us that instead of a reality being passively recorded by the brain, time is actively constructed by the brain. Time is a stubborn psychological filter that defines us as humans. The clock dictates the material dimensions of our existence. To know how we are to belong to this world we will somehow need to know what time it is.
It is the destiny of every experience to disappear. Does death itself even come at the end of life or was it there at the beginning?
To use the world well, to be able to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to relearn our being in it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
If Chronos describes time from the outside, where does time exist on the inside? If Chronos explicates time, then how do we implicate time?
What emerges is the perplexing realization that time isn’t something which happens to us.
Time does not change us.
It unfolds us.Max Frisch
Time is the poetic heArt of being.
We are time!
Time is not a field, to be measured in rods, nor a sea, to be measured in miles; it is a heart beat.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Time being.
Kairos is what many spiritual philosophers and mystics would refer to as deep time. This is the time we talk about where the world just seems to stop. It can be experienced in the wonder of a shared laugh, a full moon, a warm kiss, a colourful sunrise, and in all of those moments that take our breath away. A Kairos moment feels like time has stood still, held with open palms in the awe of serendipity. As opposed to the quantitative time ruled by the calendar fire clock of Chronos, Kairos speaks to the qualitative time of life. Chronos measures time in minutes, Kairos measures time as moments.
Sacred time is devoted to the heart, to the self, to others and to eternity. Sacred time is not measured in minutes, hours or days. Sacred time is measured in presence. Scientists argue that there is no now because as soon as we realize the now, it is already one tenth of a second in the past. Sacred time is in the now of here. Presence. David Wagoner wrote it so beautifully in his epic poem Lost stating “Wherever you are is called Here”, and “If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here”. Kairos time is Here time. The meditation of living in the moment, not living for the moment. Kairos is soul time. Kairos is Presence.
In fact it is our life purpose to learn to be present and experience the joy of Being. Presence is about Being not doing.
Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
David Wagoner
It’s when we realize that no matter what happens in Chronos time, we inhabit a life that is already full, Here. Kairos measures time as a series of moments. It is the meditation of life. All ways coming back to the present as a reunion with the universal life force of that spirit of oneness that flows through us and we flow through it. As we look out upon the world, the world is looking back upon itself as a timeless eternal energy of one. The punctuation of our life is that timeless space between seconds, between sounds, between breaths and between words. That is where our truth lies. Awareness flowing into the timelessness of Being. We are the poetry of life between the spaces. We are the poem.
Time is the soul of this world
Pythagoras
How will you tell time? In the passing of years and decades? Will you live as the ripening ripples of a widening circle of moments? Will you allow yourself to be stained with the light where the minutes and the days sing to the song of being? Wherever you are is called Here. Being Here. If you leave, you may come back again, saying, Here. Kairos. A life well-lived in the timelessness of presence.
Time
Kairos
I have always been
bound to her
She is my lover
Perpetually present
Yet fleeting
like the wind
All ways
the wisest counsellor
She is the Queen
of my existence
The ghost
of all experiences
Creator of all things
yet to come
She gives me
what she will
Not always what I desire
She is the kiss
of a moment
Not the hands
on the clock
I plead with her
to caress me slowly
as she sweetly sings me
to my grave
© Jamie Millard
Thank you for reading. The full imperfect audio podcast version is found at the top of this article.
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Lots of love,
Jamie
I love your poetry and your thoughts, Jamie. Your writing as well as your recordings are a gift to the world! Thanks for sharing your voice! 🙏
What a great exploration of a great topic! I love the questions and ponderings.
While Chronos is the eternal and cyclical, Kairos embodies the momentary, the (apparently) fleeting.
This makes me wonder whether or how our human 'time' ~ the manmade concept of the temporality of time, of time as a commodity like money ~ buying time, flying time, giving, having time, keeping time, killing time, losing time, making time, passing time, running out of time, saving time, sharing time, spending time, wasting time ~ would be understood by either Chronos or Kairos? They might be amused by this whole human entanglement with time, having endless insider jokes about it... time after time.