The time is now

"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine." It's a great line from a great song by a truly great band. I don't know about you, but as I look around the world at this moment in time it seems to me that humanity is experiencing a great crisis. I don't feel fine.

I can't ignore the rise of right-wing nationalist populism because I see it is as a great threat both to humanity and to the planet. Too many people long for the kind of certainty and stability that is simply not achievable. Maturity enables you to live with a fair amount of ambiguity. Living with ambiguity requires humility. It requires you to admit that you don't have it all figured and that the answers to many complex questions are elusive and must be provisional. Freedom, as Dostoevsky showed us, is a frightening prospect. Hence, we shrink back from it, seeking refuge, like children, in the grips of those who claim to possess the kind of certainty we desperately seek.

Anyway, here we are, the final Friday of another Church year. Probably because I am now in my mid-50s I often mention how quickly time passes. Several weeks ago I bought a CD (yeah, I know) of Amy Grant's 2013 album How Mercy Looks from Here. Released when Grant was 52, in more than one song How Mercy Looks from Here takes up the theme of how quickly time passes. It's difficult to fathom that this post is the last post of the penultimate month of 2019. While purists are quick to point out that a decade goes from year one to year zero (i.e., 2011-2020), for the rest of us 2020 marks the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century. Besides, I can't pass up opportunities to use "penultimate."

By Patrick Chappatte, 21 December 2012

I read where many of Grant's lyrics for this album were inspired by her mother's passing, which happened after an extended bout with dementia. For myself, I can remember sitting with my Dad on a very cold January day as he lay dying. He asked me how the weather was. I said, "You wouldn't like it, Dad. It's dry, windy, and cold." Indeed, he despised the cold. He loved warmth. This led him to share with me some memories he had from his childhood hanging out with his many cousins in the summertime. All of these cousins remained close and affectionate throughout their lives. He ended by telling me, "Life goes by fast."

A lot of the things we tend to invest our time, effort, and energy in are not things that have any ultimate meaning. Too easily we get caught up in the ephemera of existence. If anything, Advent bids us to step back, to avoid the soul-crushing pre-Christmas hoopla, and focus on the Light that shines in the darkness of this world. To think about the rapidly fleeting nature of life and recommit to living as children of the Light. This cannot be done without silence and solitude.

Silence and solitude cannot happen without making time for them. But you can't "make" time. You have only so much time in a day, a week, a month, a year, decade, a lifetime. Unlike an hour, a day, a week, a month, you have no idea when your time will run out. Unless Jesus returns in glory beforehand, your death is the end of the world for you, at least the end of the world as you know it. How do you feel about that? What time is it? The time is always now.

Our final traditio of this Year of Grace is, you guessed it, Amy Grant, with an assist from Carol King, singing "Our Time is Now"-

The chorus of this song is well-worth sharing:

Time is illusion
Time is a curse
Time is all these things and worse
But our time is now, oh
Yes, our time is now, oh
Let us sing before our time runs out