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Sunday, June 20, 2010
Making Time: A Sunday Rumination
"Take your choice, there is no other -- and your time is running out." -- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged[M]an can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and the moon as his chattels. -- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Time is the ultimate gift. -- Me.
Suggestions that "time is running out" are invariably intended to induce agitation. Such a statement taps into our inchoate sense for our mortality, the cellular knowledge that, like all other things, we too must pass away. The speaker seldom makes such a statement independent of some agenda -- an agenda he wants you to adopt.
In that sense, an exhortation that embeds the "time is running out" motif is a specimen of manipulative cruelty. Surely we'd rather not think about our inevitable demises; the overwhelmingly greater part of our labors, since the emergence of rational thought, has been devoted to putting them off. To be reminded of them can't help but irritate...and frighten.
What's that? You came for a Sunday Rumination but it looks as if you're getting a repent-for-the-end-is-nigh diatribe instead? You feel defrauded? You want a refund?
Heh, heh, heh!
Remember thou the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy. -- God
The overwhelming majority of American Christians attend religious services on Sunday. For Catholics, attendance at Mass is our obeisance to the Third Commandment as its requirement is interpreted by the Church. Many of us treat such attendance as a check mark on a list of chores: we strike the box that says Religious obligation: SATISFIED, and pass the rest of the day in wholly secular activities.
I'm not here to tell you that's wrong. I'm here to tell you you're shortchanging yourself.
In his book The Mainspring Of Human Progress, Henry Grady Weaver, in reviewing the Decalogue, describes the Fourth Commandment (Protestant enumeration) as a reminder that we should make time for the permanent things: "to devote some time (one day out of seven) to reflection on the eternal verities." Though he chose a secular way of approaching it, Weaver was a devout Southern Baptist Christian, who had a particular emphasis in mind. More, he considered that exhortation to have more significance than as just an arbitrary command. He deemed it to be not merely a requirement for our acceptability to God, but also a demarcated route to personal growth and fulfillment.
And so it is.
I've known several persons who've achieved mightily, whose lives are rich in wealth, accomplishment, and the admiration of others, but who find, inexplicably (to them) that even so, their lives lack resonance. They fear, quite as much as any man, that they will "die dead," and that in altogether too brief a time, their deeds will be forgotten even by those who've loved them in life. As such a man ages, he will find the opposed temptations of despair and frenzy to grow ever stronger with the passing years.
Of the two, the latter is the more dangerous to the accomplished man. He resists despair more easily because he knows himself to be capable. He's confident of his ability to surmount obstacles, including emotional obstacles. But there's an obvious trap in that confidence: it leads directly to repeating one's past approaches, even if they're irrelevant to the problem of today.
The "problem of today," in this context, is meaning: the ability to believe that, even though it's bounded in space and time, and limited to human levels of achievement, one's life has enduring significance. Such significance requires an Interpreter Who sees all and forgets nothing.
Even a professing Christian can fall into the frenzy trap, if he fails to make time for "reflection on the eternal verities." For the atheist, militant or otherwise, it's a yawning, spike-filled pit, to the edge of which he draws closer with every inexorable tick of the merciless clock:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.-- Omar Khayyam --
I shan't ramble on too much further. My point, if I haven't yet blunted it, is only this: making time to think about the permanent things -- the love of God for His Creation and its creatures; the laws of this universe; the nature of Man and his societies' requirements for order and progress; the qualities pertinent to a life well lived -- isn't "just" what God wants from us; it's also inexpressibly good for us. To make time for that seemingly inactive activity helps the self to muster endurance against the remorseless ticking of "the Clock, that Two-Handed Engine that stands behind the Door" that will one day strike, and strike no more. It helps the soul cement itself into its proper relation to God.
Whether or not more is actually required of us, a subject on which I have no opinion ready, to cut oneself off after an hour's attendance at a ritual religious service is to shortchange oneself.
The atheist, whether fliply or after long consideration, says, "There is no God," eschews all notions of permanence, and hurries to make all he can of his mortal life.
The Christian, whether intuitively or after a lifetime of prayer and reflection, says, "There is only God," lives in unending hope, and gives thanks for His gift of time, however brief the allotment.
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
Thanks for the blessing, Fran…and your time!
Posted by Noel on 06/20/2010 at 10:49 AMIntersting thoughts. You may (or may not) find an older post of mine entitled “Keeping the Sabbath” somewhat interesting.
Posted by Gorges Smythe on 06/20/2010 at 07:56 PM
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