The Other Shoulder

Screwtape explains the qualities of time

as they relate to reality.

Temptation works through

living in the past or obsessing on the future.

SKETCH 15

TIME

Does anyone know what time it is?

The ego’s tendency to control becomes evident in the way it appeals to time:
“I don’t have enough time.”
“She has too much time on her hands.”

People speak of time as they would speak of a commodity – like salt or bricks that they can bag or stack to store or distribute. When clocks spring forward for daylight savings time, we have not added additional light to the day, only reassigned our calculation of its starting and ending points. The daylight hours remain tied to the Earth’s tilt on its axis and its rotation around the sun.

Years divided by seasons, months, weeks, and days neatly mark the passing of time – until a leap year steps in to catch up these not-so-perfect units of measurement. The experience of time, like the experience of Reality, rests as much with Perception as with physics. At age 71, my grandmother told me that the older I grew, the quicker time would pass. My ten-year-old Self, schooled in new math, did not quite believe her. But six years later, my sixteen-year-old Self, sitting in Algebra 2, figured it out. By that time, each of my grandmother’s years had become 1/77th of her life, mine only 1/16th. This comparison of life’s fractions I could understand. Of course, 1/77th feels quicker than 1/16th. The relativity of time had become evident to me – how slow time felt in that classroom on a clear autumn afternoon, but how quickly it passed in the evening on the bleachers when I held my girlfriend’s hand.

Suppose we gaged time not as commodity but as relationship? Not as a punctiliar set of disconnected events (like the Egyptian and Chinese dynasties) nor a repeated cycle of ever-wheeling eons (like the Hindu and Buddhist reincarnations) nor a linear progression of unfolding episodes (like the Greek myths), but rather as an access to humanity. Not the pendulum swing of opposites, but the tic-toc of human experience? As Qoheleth notes: “To every season, there is a time and a purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). For time connects to life. Life emerges in times of birth. It expires in times of death. Life survives by seasons of planting that yield seasons of harvest. Life makes use of killing and healing. It embraces sorrow and joy expressed at funerals and at weddings. Life accumulates, disposes, retains, and refrains. Achievement and failure, building and divesting form the fabric that life rends and mends. Life continues in the silence. It carries on in speech. It loves, hates, makes war, and makes peace. Life, not time, marks human existence.

Our observance of time, like our observance of ritual, functions best when we allow it to orient our relationships. Our history with someone or our expectations for them have impact only in the moment. Time structures the memory; it targets intentions. But the only time we really have takes place Now – the place where time touches eternity; the place where the Self can choose; the place where the Self can change.

LYRIC 15

TENSE

Within the rising count of numbered days,
You store or use or guess your hopes and fears.
This trinity of Time falls out of phase.

Perceptions — then or now — turn black or blaze
Into obsessions over months and years
Drawn from the rising count of numbered days.

The Future tense constructs a spectered maze
Where little comes to pass as it appears,
And trinity of Time falls out of phase.

The stony-solid Past — unmoving — strays
In thought that wistfully rewinds and shears
The rising count of numbered, bygone days.

The timeless Present tense — lit up by rays
Of heaven — offers warmth and joy. It cheers
When trinity of Time falls out of phase.

Beware the tense you live within. It sways
The focus of your view — the nows and heres —
Since with the rising count of numbered days
The trinity of Time falls out of phase.

Resistance works by

filtering future plans through present virtues from a past redeemed.

REFLECTION READING

Anxiety – Arrogance

Matthew 6:31-34 Anxious for Tomorrow

James 4:13-17 Arrogant about Tomorrow

Time – Eternity

Deuteronomy 33:27 Eternal God
Isaiah 57:15
Psalm 90:4
2 Peter 3:8
Ephesians 3:10-11

Mark 10:17, 30 Eternal Life

Hebrews 9:11-15 Eternal Inheritance

Matthew 25:46 Sheep and Goats Judgment

Mark 3:29 Eternal Sin

Galatians 5:16-21 Deeds of the Flesh

Galatians 5:22-26 Fruit of the Spirit

1 Peter 2:1-3 Removal

2 Peter 1:3-9 Diligence

Planning – Duty

Matthew 6:19-21 Treasure

Matthew 6:25-34 Anxiety

Luke 14:25-34 Calculating the Cost

1 Timothy 5:3-8 Providing for One’s Own