Just a Measure of Time

We measure time in ways that were configured in ancient times-watching the seasons, the sun, the moon-the tides. No one will ever know the first person who tried to give structure to this measurement. In the book of Genesis time was demonstrated evening and morning in each day. The Ancient Egyptians used sundials and divided days into 12 smaller parts. As early as 1,500 BC, they began to divide the time period between sunrise and sunset into these 12 parts. Since the sun does not always shine the Romans developed water clocks which used the flow of water to measure the passing of time. A container of water was slowly and evenly drained to mark the passage of time. More recently the atomic clock was developed and now they use lasers I believe to tell time to the attosecond.

I like to think of how folks figured this all out-it’s all pretty amazing-and we live by this standard of telling time developed long ago, the clock and the calendar being prevailing forces which steer our days, our years, our lives.

It may have been a beautiful thing if time-and life itself was left to be a bit more of a mystery and we woke up to the miracle of a new day with wonder and awe - to a feeling of what’s next? Somehow, we seem to have lost our connection to this mystery of life, to the natural world, being part of the bones of the earth and all of its subtle renderings - its changes-its callings.

Being a lover of all kinds of weather, I hear people scoff if meteorologists don’t have the exact forecast for the day-when a prediction of rain turns into inches of snow, or the promised sunshine is hindered by high clouds- and I think, ‘Yes! There is still some mystery out there, some force greater than ourselves!’ I often want to be part of this mystery, tousled by the wind, surprised by a sudden rain shower, awed by the gift of a rainbow.

I can feel this passing of time in my bones, and wrinkles and fading eyesight. I feel it when my daughter heads off to graduate school and a certain emptiness returns. I feel it in the sign of tired leaves destined to fall. I hear it as acorns hit the roof, as the ocean waters cool, as the hummingbird’s long journey begins. Yes, time is not held by our clocks and our calendars-time is an inner force that binds us to life’s journey- connects us to the earth and to the boundless mystery of life.