It's Time

Rev. Paul Beckel

First Universalist Unitarian Church ~ www.uuwausau.org

December 31, 2006

Nothing is lost; be still; the universe is honest.

Time, like the sea, gives all back in the end,

But only in its own way,

on its own conditions:

Empires as grains of sand,

forests as coal,

Mountains as pebbles. 

Be still, be still, I say;

You were never the water, only a wave;

Not substance, but a form substance assumed.                      Elder Olson

When I met the Grandfather of Time, he said it was no use struggling.  Even after all these years he still had too much to do.

Brian Andreas

PRIVATE

Time as Mystery

I remember when Ben was four.  When I told him that he would have to wait for something, and it seemed like a long time (to him) he’d whine, "Awww, that will take an HOUR!"  Even when I would explicitly say, "I'll bring you to play at Jason's house in 15 minutes," he’d repeat, "But that will take an hour!"  If I’d tell him at breakfast that I would play with him after preschool was over, he might ask, "Is that a long time?"  I'd answer, "It's 8 hours." "Oh no,” he’d respond, “that will take an HOUR!"

We age and we age but we may never understand time.  Mysterious, and yet at the same time so fundamental as to be impossible to define without reference to itself.  According to one definition "time" is an interval separating two regularly recurring events, such as sunrise or sunset.  But then I cannot help but ask -- what is an interval?

I need something more concrete... or perhaps as I age I just need something longer than the interval between today and tomorrow to use to mark time.  Perhaps a season.  I can kind of recognize a season -- especially winter, with the holidays not quite over and cabin fever setting in. Winter in the North reminds me what time is.  April and May seem like an HOUR away.

But even if we cannot define it, there is little room for doubting time -- except perhaps in the most speculative and abstract science fiction.  Time is something we grasp intuitively...even as we may each experience it's passage differently.

We experience time subjectively...it passes through my inner life with little reference to the rate at which it passes through your inner life.

And subjectively we feel time fly -- when we are having fun... and slow -- when we are waiting for the pot to boil or the pain to end.

Christmas vacation come and gone -- to the relief of some and the anguish of others.  Even if we haven't been paying attention we sense a loss of something that was here and has gone by.

We may be unhappy with time for passing too quickly OR for passing too slowly... as if we had our own private clocks -- and we do -- to tell us how fast it ought to pass.

Jane Austen writes, "A watch is always too fast or too slow.  I cannot be dictated by a watch."

Cecil Dawkins writes, "Time pulses from the afternoon like blood from a serious wound."

And Edith Wharton writes, "Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace.  Usually it loiters; but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.

==

We experience the passage of time subjectively, but we measure it objectively -- according to the movements of large heavenly bodies and invisible subatomic particles.

But just as 20^th century physics has given us the ability to calibrate every moment to the vibrations of an atom, it has also skewed our entire notion of objectivity with proof to Einstein's theory that everything, even objective measurement of time, depends upon our frame of reference.

BF Skinner writes, "Wounds heal in time, things are constructed in time, things disappear in time and are destroyed in time, but this is not what time does."

So what DOES it do? It clarifies intervals (whatever they are), arranges our lives, brings some order to the chaos; it adds structure, continuity, and even meaning to our lives.

Plato referred to time as "the moving image of eternity" ... it's "as if we were floating on a river, carried...past the manifold of events ...spread out timelessly on the bank."

There is no time without change.  The Greek philosopher Heraclitus insisted that there is no permanent reality whatever, only change, and therefore the only possible real state is the transitional state of becoming.  Since "transitional" means different from one moment to the next, if there was not change from one moment to the next, then the passage of time would be meaningless.

Humans have always celebrated the repetitive nature of time, with Christian calendars and pagan circles of stone wrestled into place in an attempt to frame the collective community experience of time's cyclical passage.

But time's mystery is brought out in our inability to correlate this cyclical aspect with an equally apparent linear aspect.  So at the same time we mark time with public celebrations of those events recurring regularly, we also perform rites to mark private one-time only life passages.

With thoughtful words, ancient incantations, and/or lots of photos, we attempt to stop the clock at least for a moment...at least long enough to notice that something important has happened -- a birth, a death, passage into various stages of maturity... events which, at least for any given individual, will never come 'round again.

But despite our best efforts to capture or to define it, ultimately "You don't deal with time, time deals with you." [Cecil Dawkins]

MEDITATION

I invite you now to join me in the spirit of meditation....  Hypnosis is an effective tool for altering our consciousness of the passage of time.  But even the mild hypnotic effects of relaxation or placing our focus on our breathing can have a similar effect.

I invite you now to allow time to pass without grasping, without regret.  For the next three minutes I invite you to breathe deeply -- in through your mouth and out through you nose.  Remaining fully conscious and aware of yourself and your surroundings, fully aware that you are doing nothing, fully aware that 3 minutes of this day are about to pass... fully aware but unperturbed: unperturbed by noise or distraction or the thoughts that will float in and out of your consciousness ... unperturbed by worry or impatience ... expectations or fears....

Time as Heartbeat

We find the philosophers and the physicists on a similar plane of abstraction in their quest to fathom the mystery of time.  Biology, on the other hand, enables us to define time more tangibly -- if somewhat egoistically -- as the interval between the first and the last beats of our own hearts.

Biology certainly affects our perception of time. Biochemical recordings in our brains, called memories, convince us that the past is truly over, and that the future is yet to be.  And yet these same memories have the magical ability to make the past seem present.

Our internal and individual biological clocks are influenced by our age, gender, culture, and religion, by environmental conditions and body temperature, by deprivation of light or sound, and by mental states altered by drugs or hypnosis.

Age may or may not make time seem to go faster, but if nothing else it increases our awareness that our days are numbered.  Likewise our metabolism, and possibly bio-electrical rhythms, regulate our sense of time, as they do for hibernating animals.  When I lived in Cleveland I had the privilege of witnessing an astonishing natural phenomenon. The Cleveland-area cicadas come out once every 17 years; somehow they know when it is time to be born (and time to die for that matter, after only a few hours of adult life). They emerge, seemingly from nowhere, totally infest the human world in LOUD manic clouds of life, then, leaving behind only exo-skeletons and buried eggs, disappear for another 17 years.

==

Body temperature plays a role in our perception of time. Some of you may have experienced this recently if you’ve had illness in your household, and time has dragged.  Apparently it is not simply misery that shifts our perspective of time -- changes in body temperature can have a significant effect. One biologist discovered this firsthand when his wife, who was running a high fever, sent him out to pick up some medicine.  When he returned after 20 minutes she chided him for being gone for an HOUR.  The discrepancy led the biologist to ask his wife to count to sixty at a rate of what she believed to be one count per second.  With an elevated fever, she counted to sixty in approximately 30 seconds, as the fever dropped, so did her counting pace.

Some drugs, including hallucinogens, can make time seem to go slower or faster.  Stimulants - including caffeine - speed up the activities of our central nervous system and make time seem longer.  Depressants, on the other hand, including tranquilizers and alcohol, slow things down, making time seem shorter.

Brain injury or disease, pain, acute conflict or stress... all affect one's time estimation ability. The same is true with boredom, as in highway hypnosis -- which makes it hard to remember any details from a long road trip.  Or long sermons -- during which one can lose all touch with reality.

Our biological clocks are also affected by the amount of sleep and light we get (most of us getting too little, rather than too much of these).  Both jet lag, and SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, can disrupt our body temperature cycles, our eating and sleep cycles, and our expectation of light, leading to irritability, decreased attention span, and other biological complaints.

Jet lag is temporary.  But for those on permanent shifting schedules -- either with constant travel or shift work -- time discontinuity affects productivity, relationships, and alertness and can even set us up for accidents.

One SAD researcher suggests that humans were originally designed to sleep through the winter...and that those who suffer from SAD are biologically closer to our ancestors.

And finally, beyond our day-to-day perceptions of time, biology determines whether we will be here to tell time at all.

When he was still unknown outside the world of international bike racing, a young American, Lance Armstrong, discovered that he had cancer.  Following the longest year of his life -- a year of chemotherapy more grueling, he says, than any kind of race through the Alps... following a year of having his biological self ravaged by drugs designed to kill, Armstrong held a press conference to announce his return to cycling. The eventual 7-time Tour de France winner who had been given minimal chances at survival told reporters, "I would just like to say one thing. If you get a second chance in life...you've got to go all the way."

OFFERTORY

Time as Pilgrimage

In all likelihood, time exists beyond my puny biological lifespan.  There is plenty of evidence that time predates my consciousness and that it will continue well beyond my dash across the stage.  But it still may be helpful to acknowledge that as individuals, our time on earth is limited, and that when we are gone, we are gone.

A poem called "How do you live your dash?" refers to the dates on one's tombstone being less important than the dash in-between those dates... that little line... that little line which represents all the time that we spend alive on earth.  How do you live your dash?

In his earlier life, when Lance Armstrong knew himself only as a bicycle racer, he lived for the moment...and he did so very successfully.  In order to compete at his level he had to remain intensely focused upon every aspect of the race -- road conditions, weather, his teammates, his body, the competition -- he had to remain intensely focused upon winning each and every day.  Cancer caused Armstrong to re-calibrate his sense of time.  He married, had a child, and began to live for the future as well. 

We often hear the advice, “Live in the moment.” But what if we mistake that for “Live in a state of passive bliss”? What if we mistake “Live in the moment” for “Live in a state of manic concentration”? As much as I remind myself to live in the moment, I also wonder: do I really wish to live with no sense of time whatever?  Would I prefer to live like an infant -- with no patience waiting for a meal, no caution derived from remembering the past, no anticipation or hope for the future?  Certainly not.  A healthy time-consciousness is not so passive.

Rumanian poet Elizabeth Bibesco describes someone this way: "He is invariably in a hurry--being in a hurry is one of the tributes he pays to life." Being in a hurry may be a very legitimate way to live our dash.  Being in a hurry is sometimes the best way for me to get a job done... rushing to a deadline is when I stop wasting time.

So is quality time that which is productive, or serene?  Or is it just being wherever we are needed? Clearly there is meaning and purpose to preparing and planning, hoping and working for the future... working today to establish and/or to strengthen a family, business, artistic, civic, or religious tradition. It is difficult to keep a balanced, healthy time consciousness -- one that involves an awareness of time but not an obsession. 

==

Some people find it unfathomable that our Unitarian Universalist movement makes no claims for the end times or even an end goal for the individual life pilgrimage.

One can point to other traditions which laud final objectives such as the Hebrew scripture which speaks of death as "sleeping with one's ancestors," a well-earned homecoming after a life of traveling.  Or Christian or Muslim notions of final union with God, or Hindus' Nirvana which results from a journey of several lifetimes.

But a healthy time-consciousness does not, in my opinion, need such a destination, in fact it can suffer severely if the journey itself is disregarded in preference for a final objective.

In a true pilgrimage, as I see it, we are fully aware of past, present, and future time, and fully open to the changes that must occur between these stages of our lives.  As Holly Near sings: "Time has passed through me and become a song."

A sense of time which includes past present and future is unafraid of change and unafraid even of death, which is an inevitable product of time.  Physician Sherwin Nuland, writing on the inevitability of death, says, "The fact that there is a limited time to do the rewarding things in our lives is what creates the urgency to do them."

16^th century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne entitled one essay "To Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die." He wrote: "the utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; one may have lived long, and yet lived but a little."

==

As you cross into the new year this week I invite you to pay attention to who it is that is crossing this new bridge.  Are you crossing with regret that you have not made the most of the past?  Are you crossing with resentment that other people or circumstances have held you back?  Are you crossing with fear that 2007 will pass too quickly, or too slowly? 

As you cross into the new year I encourage you to step assertively: not without speed but not without care.  Remember the times before and anticipate the days ahead, and cross this bridge with joy.

CLOSING HYMN                 Now Let Us Sing                        #368

Sources

¨      The Mystery of Time: Humanity's Quest for Order and Measure, John Langone

¨      How We Die, Sherwin B. Nuland

¨      It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back from Cancer, Lance Armstrong