Blog
Nonstandard Time
Nov
2020 November Blog by Mary Lynn Delfino ~ November 1 marks the return to Standard Time in the United States. As I turn my clocks back one hour (or count on my devices to do it automatically), I sense the irony this year in the phrase “return to Standard Time.” How I long for anything standard in the middle of a pandemic!
If I close my eyes while turning the clocks backward, can I enter a portal in time when COVID-19, face coverings, social distancing, and all the rest are in the past? Maybe if I close my eyes tightly and pray, “Pretty, pretty please?” my request will be granted.
OK, that’s some magical thinking which isn’t going to work—so what now?
For me, it’s easy to dwell on all of the time which has been lost in Nonstandard Time aka ‘Rona Time: visiting family and friends, giving and receiving hugs, eating at a shared table, attending the weddings of my former students, going to the Texas Butterfly Festival, to name a few. As a younger member of the Centering Space community, I rarely thought much about the finitude of time until recently, but now it is a major source of anxiety. How much more can be lost?
As we change our clocks, though, it reminds me that our experience of time is somewhat arbitrary. Who decided decades ago to help farmers we could give an hour in the spring and then take it back in the fall? It has created an illusion of mastery, a belief that we can fashion time the way we want it.
Deep down, as a person of faith, I know that these nonstandard times which I bristle against and want to move through quickly are indeed part of God’s appointed time, or kairos. I remember that kairos, in ‘Rona Time or not, is usually accompanied by lots of waiting and wondering and sometimes wailing.
Nonstandard Time, despite its many challenges, has bestowed unexpected blessings upon me: the time to join in weekly prayer at Centering Space, something I could not do normally. There in our Zoom squares on Wednesday afternoons, the community forms a circle. We wait and wonder and wail (on mute, of course) together. We seek the hope and wisdom of a known God in unknown and uncertain times and strive to live together in kairos, the original Standard Time.
Song for Reflection: “In Every Age” by Janèt Sullivan Whitaker
Beautifully written ML. As a lover of nature, natural sciences, the cosmos and how we humans fit ourselves into it, I see time as the constant that overlays it all. The changing seasons and all that means at different latitudes. When to plant, when to harvest. When to bear young so there’s time to raise them. The migrations and the climates that drive life forms and plot out their behaviors. The paths of the Moon and Planets more predictable than anything on Earth. Time moves on. We measure it, curse it, wish for more, mark the passing and pretend to control it. The past 8 months have moved at glacial speed. All the time in the world. What day is it? Should I set an alarm? I think I will miss this period of floating through time but long for the patterns and predictability of a standard time frame to better pace my daily existence.