I’ve been thinking about time and the language we use to describe this remarkable, mystical, and mortal aspect of our existence. We see time as something tangible that we are given and that we spend. We have a limited amount, clearly, for how we spend it matters. We say time was lost, time disappeared, time passed. We hold an account of time, rather like a bank deposit, like coins paid out or hoarded.
I often have an urgent sense that life is short, and when I mentioned this to my bishop of blessed memory, a long time ago, saying, “I sense death nearby each day,” he replied, “That’s okay. It makes you religious. It is good to sense death, for then you value life even more. It’s the reality of our existence, and we are a people of reality.”
He was right. For the cloud that I sometimes find myself inside – this awareness – magnifies life all around me, making it intensely real and magnificently beautiful, like a crimson sunset.
We have many ways of marking time – calendars, seasons, festivals, birthdays, anniversaries, pilgrimages. I went on a pilgrimage once, a curious experience of procession, prayer, intercession, reflection, and time marked by my footsteps along the main street of a town, along with others, walking and singing toward a shrine of an Anglican saint in Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin, Bishop Charles Grafton.
It was a millennium pilgrimage, marking the end of a century and the beginning of another. It marked our own lives too, where each one of us was at that moment in time and where we wanted to be, where we wanted to go in our own lifetimes. It marked our setting out with purpose, traveling along the way together, and arriving at our destination where we found candles flaming and a sarcophagus of the saintly bishop, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was time spent together with other faithful, and our footsteps merged into a quiet river of time, a river of love.
A priest I knew often said that the person who is late is a thief of time, taking precious minutes or hours or days away from those who were on time. I’ve often recalled that, for my husband has a clock ticking in his head, and we usually arrive early everywhere (warning!), and wait for the thieves of our time to arrive. The idea of “being fashionably late” strikes me as a strange, unmannerly aberration, and reflects today’s culture of self. A member of our extended family was notorious for arriving 2-3 hours late for family dinners. Does one wait to serve the turkey or open the presents? Or does one ignore said family member? This was a recurrent theme at holidays.
Time. Because it is limited, time grows in value, in proportion to its scarcity, just as we learned in Economics 101. The hour glass is fast filling its lower half. As we approach our “gentle years” we think about it more, or perhaps we have more time to think about it. That is a blessing – time to repent, time to repay, time to learn to love as we are meant to love. Time to make things right before our time runs out. It is the right time to take stock.
I considered these things this morning in my time with other faithful (this time logging in from home) and listened to the Gospel about the Good Samaritan. Christ tells this parable in answer to the question, “If I must love my neighbor as myself, who, exactly is my neighbor?” We all know the parable – the man accosted by thieves and left by the side of the road, those travelers who pass by him, and the one man, a hated Samaritan, who stops to help him, bind his wounds, and take him to an inn to care for him. Clearly, Our Lord tells us, we must love and care for all.
Most of the time, we identify with the Samaritan or perhaps those who pass by. And yet, I came across an icon of the Good Samaritan that showed Christ carrying the wounded man on his shoulders, as he is often shown carrying the lost sheep on his shoulders. We are the wounded ones here. We are the lost sheep. We are found in the ditch or on a precipice far away and lifted upon the shoulders of Our Lord God.
Christ is the Good Samaritan. And if that is the case, then we are the wounded who are rescued and taken to an inn, perhaps the inn of his Church, his Bride.
Of course the parable in its context explained how we should treat others if we are to obey the law of God. But I was glad to see the wounded man being carried on the shoulders of Jesus the Good Shepherd. For as we are wounded in this world by many slings and arrows, as we are silenced and surrounded and imprisoned for speaking truth to lies, it is only a matter of time before we will be found, raised up, and carried to the safety of an inn, to be healed, to be reborn, by Our Lord of love.
And so the clock ticks through our days, hours, and minutes. How are we spending our days, hours, minutes? Could our time be better spent? Are we burying our talents, spending our time fruitlessly? These are valuable, blessed questions to ask, to reflect upon, and find answers in the Inn of Christ, his Church. And this is how we spend our time on a Sunday, being lifted in the arms of Our Lord and carried upon his shoulders, to be healed.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 