Our Relationship to the passing of time
We have just celebrated the beginning of another New Year and no doubt we reflected on the year which has passed with all its joys and trials. We mark in our diaries, the passage of time and many of us will have noted our calendars, setting out our plans for the year ahead. Christmas is over and the shops are getting ready for a secular Easter with hot cross buns and Easter eggs. In our modern age, which is clock driven, we too can be carried along to plan and achieve, often losing the pleasure and mystery of the moment as we are driven forward.
Yet time was not always measured by the mechanical or electronic clock. Jesus living in the time of the pre mechanical clock refers to that. He says, ‘Night time comes when no one can work’. Night time was a time to eat, to tell stories and to go to sleep. Time was measured by the rising and setting of the sun and by the passing of the seasons. Now we can work and shop until we drop.
But we can change our relationship with time even if we can’t escape its fleeting nature. We can learn to inhabit our days so that we are fully present in the moment. We can learn to let go of distractions and the things which get in the way of our experience of time. We can learn to connect to the rhythm of the natural world. We can give up the illusion of being in control.
Each of us in our role as chaplains, needs a period of quiet reflection each day, a period of timelessness when we put our work lists aside. In this contemplative, prayerful space our souls are nurtured as we connect with something greater than ourselves, something which is timeless. So, in this New Year may we all find time to reflect on what matters in our lives and in our work. May we be nurtured by those things, letting time unfold outside of our task driven lives.
Wishing you all a joyful New Year.
From Cambridgeshire Workplace Chaplaincy