It’s about time.
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My times are in your hand;
deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors!
Ps 31:15.
It's a New Year, again. It's a time when people meet with family, renew their 'resolutions', and talk about how the time has flown. Families may keep certain traditions, some hardly regard the night, and still others spend it in such a way that they hardly remember it the next day.
One comment that is thrown around a lot, is 'I can't believe it's already another New Year', or others may say, 'my goodness, time has flown, can you believe it's New Year's Day already?' It's this sentiment that I am thinking about for myself tonight, as I do often find myself thinking and saying these expressions myself. It brings me to the concept of time.
We say a lot of things about time, in general:
I can't believe time has gone so quickly
Wow, what a waste of time!
Time flies when you're having fun.
My how the time is moving slowly.
Be sure to make good use of your time.
We talk about time a lot. I think we struggle with how to use it more.
What is it for?
'In the beginning...' This is the opening line of both Genesis and the Gospel of John. Some people suggest it should be translated as, 'when the beginning began'. It suggests the creation of time happened at that moment. So, time is really just the context in which 'stuff happens', it's the framing place where interactions occur. It's for us to be in. These interactions may be with people, creatures, or the planet as a whole. Like relationships, what we do in time has effects that go beyond the immediate moment, and beyond our own selves. There will be a 'time' when we are no longer 'in time', and I can't begin to fathom what that means or looks like, because of how affected by time I am.
In time, as mentioned, we do things, we plant things, and we see what happens to them over time and in time. This is true literally in many ways, and figuratively in virtually all ways. But if time is for us to be in, how then, do we measure or evaluate whether time was 'well spent' or 'wasted'? If all of creation is for humanity, then time was not made to be lord over us, but us over it. Time is subject to how we use it, yet, I wonder, how many of us live enslaved to time.
If time is for us, then like all things, it's just a thing to live in and do rightly. If I'm living rightly in time, then time is done right.
In some ways, time aids us in regulating ourselves to learn balance and self-control. It's through time that we find ourselves resting and waking. It's through time that we observe the growing of different seeds, herbs and living things. It's through time that we see humans and animals grow. The combination of time and living in it, can teach us many things, but I'm not sure if that's where I want to go with it right now.
If done wrongly...
Time is only wrong if we're enslaved to it, or living in it unwisely. If time rules me, then I am 'working against the clock'. I've made the external govern my internal. This kind of living is stressful, and may be objectively wrong. If I think I need to have achieved certain milestones by a certain age or time, for example, then I'm living with a random timer that may cause undue angst. If I demand others to do something by a particular time, I might be creating something (in time) that is wrong, and cause others undue stress and suffering.
An experiment:
Sometimes we use it wrongly with the best of intentions. These last two years I felt very 'stressed' about my time. I felt that, if used rightly, my time should be for others. Gratifying all that others may want or need proved to be a difficult task. Many people gave their input/views about how 'time' should be 'spent'. Indicating that time is a budget. I decided to put out an actual budget for time. I budgeted time for phone calls, for meetings, for preparatory time, for visitations, for liturgies...for virtually everything. While some people were gratified, I found myself miserable. To me, this use of time was entirely unnatural, and yet I felt so bound by it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the concept of budgeting time was ridiculously, but I wasn't aware that over-budgeting takes away a major aspect of time: spontaneity. By so precisely budgeting every moment of time, I found that living naturally was gone. If someone were to say, 'hey, can we grab coffee and talk?' The answer might be, 'What are you doing on Thursday in about 17 days?' It took away something from the natural progression and use of time.
But the experiment made me appreciate what time does more. I don't think, two years ago, I would've been able to meditate very long on time at all. But the budgeting of it made me realise the different uses we make of it. Even if, I think, I over-budgeted, there was a value lesson learned from the experiment. Time is still meant to be used for the gospel, any time spent on anyone in love, was time well-spent.
The budget perhaps made me realise that not all investments of time have the same output, that perhaps, over-budgeting may mean that you're giving 100 people two dollars each, whereas another way of budgeting might give four people fifty dollars each, but in both cases, one is giving. But this budgeting of time, led to the question of whether one can do much with the two dollars, or if one should strive for giving the fifty. The experiment was only valuable insofar as realising that time is not only my own, just like everything else in existence. The proper use of time is love, the choosing, and only in the light of love can one gauge whether time has been well spent.
It's wrong when...
Time is done wrongly when I feel I own it, like it's only for me, and spent only on me.
That improper use of time can be my thoughts, my energy, my social time, my work time...any of them. I can be selfish by using time to advance only myself, by using it to think solely about and for myself. I can use time wrongly by refusing to use any of it to visit others, comfort others, think of others, or ask about others. I can use it wrongly by demanding others budget their time around my own. I can abuse time by exploiting it for self-gain or destruction of others. If I do objective wrong, I've used time wrongly.
But it's good...
It's good when time is used for love, for growth, for choices that align with real purpose. If I use time in that way, then I will not ever fear that my time was wasted. We have invented random 'times' for ourselves, and that's why we get stressed out. If I have bowed to a made-up use of time, that I must work-out daily, for example, no matter what, then I will view stopping to help someone with their homework as an abuse of 'my time'. If I think I need to have gotten a promotion by a certain age, I might think time spent with my spouse and children is a poor use of time.
If I think that nothing is more important than a certain kind of success plan, then I might view intentional, active, spiritual work, as a 'waste of time'. Time is good when we use it for the gospel. It's simple.
Consecrate it
One thing that was clear to me from the experiment, and I'm sure many of you already realise it without needing to do the experiment, is that time does need to be set aside for things. In spiritual language, we call this, 'consecration'.
Perhaps in this new year, you could think about what you consecrate your time for. Many people are told to consecrate time in the morning and evening to talk to God, this is a good custom. One should consider whether one consecrates time for family, whether one consecrates time for cultivating proper relationships, and whether one consecrates time to ensure proper growth in all areas of life. WHen you consecrate time properly, you see the fruits of the sowing of that time. If you consecrate time for learning guitar, you eventually get good at guitar. If you let time run you, you do not see its fruits.
I remember when I was given a rule during my novitiate to read from the desert fathers every single day. When I left the monastery for service, I felt compelled to continue in this 'rule'. The rule, effectively, was deanding that I consecrate some time for spiritual reading. So, I made sure that I read something from the fathers every night before sleeping, even if it was only a page. The short consecration of that time did wonders for me: it affected my thoughts, behaviours, moods, and reflections. It helped me navigate problems of my own and problems of others. It was a small consecration of time that had huge ramifications when done consistently.
So, perhaps, in this new year, you could talk to your spiritual director about exercises of time consecration that you could take on. Talk to your advisor about whether it should be in prayers, Bible, vespers or liturgy, or with people you do not value enough, or people that you have neglected in general. Perhaps some should be consecrated for silence, and for others, some could be consecrated for outreach. Evaluate your use of time, and examine whether time is owrning you, or you own time, and if you own it, whether you use it for good or not.
Saint Antony taught us to treat every present moment in time as the most important one. That could be an exercise for some as well, especially if you are the kind of person is always living in the past or worrying about the future. As our Lord said, 'sufficient to the day is the evil thereof'.
If you're someone who is selfish with time, be sure to visit exercises that are focused on others more than self. If you're someone who avoids any time with your self or intimate time with God, then perhaps your exercise should focus on consecration for private time.
You get the gist. Take the time, make the appointment, and get time to be under your dominion.
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Ps 90:12.
