“My days have been consumed in smoke, my days are like a lengthened shadow.”
—Psalm 102
Would you believe January was not always the first month of the year? The ancient Romans used a different calendar system, and their year began in March and ended in February. The Romans gave us the month’s names.
The ancient Romans insisted that all wars cease during the time of celebration between the old and new year, so the Romans named March after Mars, the Roman god of war. April is either from “second,” or from “aperire," a Latin word meaning “to open," because it represents the opening of buds and flowers in spring, or the goddess Aphrodite. May is after Maia, an earth goddess of growing plants. June after Juno, the queen of the gods and patroness of marriage and weddings. July was named after Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. Previously, July was called “Quintilis," which is Latin for “fifth." August was named after Augustus Caesar in 8 B.C. Previously, August was called “Sextillia," which was Latin for “sixth." Though we think of September (septem = seven), October (octo = eight), November (novem= nine), and December (decem = ten), as months 9, 10, 11 and 12, these months were 7, 8, 9, and 10 on the ancient Roman calendar. Then, around 690 B.C., Numa Pompilius turned a period of celebration at the end of the year into a month of its own, named after the festival Februa. And later, Pompilius added another month to the beginning of the year and named it January after Janus, the god of beginnings and endings. In 1582, Pope Gregory adjusted the calendar, so most western nations began celebrating the start of the year on January 1. So, there you have the origins of our calendar. It used to work quite well for scheduling and celebrating the rhythms of the year. Not so much any longer. In fact, the most wasted money spent in 2020 was for my Annual Planning Guide and Calendar.
We are all living in limbo. We do not know whether tomorrow we will be in lockdown or free to roam, wearing mandatory masks or walking carefree. So, how are we to schedule our lives? How are we to plan for the normal events that require organization and decision making such as holidays, graduations, weddings, summer vacations, camps, and school? In our lives before the pandemic, we made solid schedules, and that gave us a sense of control. We knew when things would happen and could strategize accordingly. There was order in our lives and there was a certainty in knowing that things were set in time and would happen as planned.
COVID-19 turned our lives upside down. No longer can we count on our plans. Gone is our sense of control, and we simply do not know what tomorrow will bring. Just as things seem to be calming down, we are being faced with racial unrest stoked by fears which is causing other restrictions on our autonomy. So, how do we go about our lives? How can we schedule when all plans can be upended at any given moment?
“Wait, what day is it?” If only I had a dollar for the number of times, I have asked myself that question in the last few weeks. To say I am constantly checking my kitchen wall calendar is not an exaggeration. I’ve honestly lost track, and I am usually a pretty good tracker. And in text conversations, phone calls, and the occasional dreaded Zoom with work colleagues, they are asking that same question. If we were to push our question just a smidge further, we are all essentially asking, “What time is it?”
We traditionally tell time in two ways. First, there is chronos. Look no further than your wristwatch or alarm clock (which may be one and the same). Chronos is clock time, such as 9:30 a.m. or 4:15 p.m. Then, there’s kairos. For the believer, this is what we consider God's time. Think of Peter, James, and John as they accompanied Jesus up the Mount of Transfiguration. Chronos was ticking on, but they were also in kairos—something was happening far beyond hours and minutes and seconds. In the valley of the shadow of COVID-19, chronos has blurred for most of us, and kairos, feels even darker. Whether we like it or not, we are now living in— or by— different time. I wonder if there was another way to talk about time right now—time with an asterisk beside it, time that admits our dependency.
In her childhood fantasy book, A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle proposes the reality of a tesseract—a time warp, if you will. Wrinkled time. Think about it. Wrinkled time is the slower pace of living that people with disabilities, and children dependent on school lunches for daily nourishment, and the aged in nursing homes and extended care facilities know all too well. It feels very real for them—their weekly, daily, even hourly experience. A large swath of our world’s population tries to either ignore that experience of time (Express check-out lane, please), tolerate it from a distance (Oh, those poor people over there), or more often than not somehow transcend it (I’m so glad I’m not like those people). Yet now the rest of us have walked a few months in shoes that resemble theirs—at least a little bit. We feel wrinkled, and there is every indication these months could turn into a year or beyond. Day after day of wrinkles.
But the Psalmist reminds us “My times are in your hands,” (Psalm 31:15). Even if our lives are not always matching up with the current clock or calendar, everything is still in God’s hands. The Psalmist uses a word indicating a pause or a break—selah—as indicating a pause, or a break. Think of them as wrinkles in time. May I propose the following spiritual discipline during these Covid days—pause points for our days. They can serve as both reminders and admissions that even as our lives are not always matching up with the current clock, everything is still in God’s hands. Everything.
Selah. As soon as you wake up in the morning, look at your watch or phone and simply make a mental note of the time. Thank God for the new mercies of a new day.
Selah. When you break for lunch, place your index and middle fingers on the underside of your opposite wrist (feel your pulse). Take stock of how you feel—strong, weak, or something in between? Physical and spiritual movement is important during these days.
Selah. At dinner or just after, pause and consider someone to check up on. This could be a family member, friend, neighbor, church member, or work colleague. It does not have to be much, but reaching out via phone, email, or even text message means more than most of us realize. Now follow through on that thought.
Selah. Before you close your eyes, think of one thing that frustrated you about the day. Now think of one thing during the day you were grateful for. Admit the frustrations and thank God for another day.
God, you are always near, please show us Your nearness this day, which feels strangely like yesterday and the day before. We pray, Your kingdom come and Your will be done, here on earth in our wrinkled time as it is in heaven, where Your time is the only one that matters. We ask for literal bread this day, for both ourselves and our neighbors. And we request the bread of forgiveness for our trespasses as we in turn share that same bread with others for theirs. We have all fallen short, Lord. We know this. Our days feel hazy and shadowy—keep us from the evil one, we pray. Give us the courage to chase after justice and love and mercy, to do what we can to redeem the time. For Yours and Yours alone is the kingdom, power, and glory, now and forevermore. Amen.
Agape, Mike