sanctifying time...

The recent "retirement from the road" of Paul Simon touched me deeply. Returning home from Canada, we listened to his interview with Bob Boilen of NPR's "All Songs Considered." (check it out @ https://www.npr.org/podcasts/ 510019/all-songs-considered) Simon is a demanding artist: he can be snarky and self-absorbed one moment only to become wise and introspective in the next. He is fiercely independent and precise when it comes to his art. (Watch a clip from Under African Skies, the 25th anniversary documentary of Simon's Graceland masterpiece, for a taste of his acerbic tongue and challenging persona.)



Whatever conclusions you may draw about Simon's strong personality, I have always found his music brilliant: old, new and in-between, this is an artist who works hard to bring beauty, truth and hope into a broken world. Think "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" and "The Boxer." Same holds for "Graceland" and "So Beautiful or So What." His new album, Blue Light, reinterprets some of his personal favorites in new collaborations with some of his favorite artists. (This reworking of "Can't Run" from the Graceland follow-up, Rhythm of the Saints, is wildly inventive and musical stunning.)


As I listened to the Boilen interview, and then some of his commentary from the final concert in Forest Hills, NY, I was moved by Simon's careful consideration of what the Spirit is saying to his heart. His mystical encounters with a love and power greater than himself are leading Simon to let go of living fundamentally for art. He now not only wants to explore the meaning of his dreams, but serve the common good by using his time and resources to heal Mother Earth.

I haven't written a new song in a couple of years, now. I think after [the 2016 album] Stranger To Stranger, a funny thing happened when I finished - I literally felt like a switch clicked and I said, 'I'm finished... What I'm really interested in on a personal level are my dreams... We don't have the capacity to understand the great mysteries of life and God or no God or infinity, we just can't get it. It's beyond us, but that's fine. We're not meant to get that. But the pursuit is so interesting. That, I think, it's life sustaining and I think when you lose the interest in that pursuit you're finished. 
https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2018/09/05/644544793/paul-simon-says-im-finished-writing-music)

In this, Simon is living into the archetype of the senex, the wise elder who intentionally chooses a path of solitude and reflection over earlier pursuits of glory. The senex is the polar opposite of the puer, exemplified in Greek mythology by Ichyrus. This exuberant youth foolishly ignores his father's wisdom by flying too close to the sun only to crash to his death in the sea as the wax of his human-made wings melt. If the puer describes the naive hubris of youth, the healthy senex is all about wisdom hard won. There are also unhealthy manifestations of older men who become either devouring fathers, cynical old fools or the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thanks be to God that Simon has not stayed on any of those paths. I am cautiously optimistic and hopeful about what this genius will share next - even if that is silence.

Which brings me back to why the sacramental wisdom of the seasons continues to give me pause: to everything - each day, each love, as well as each career and commitment - there is a season. A natural ebb and flow, birth and death.  Each day after the equinox is incrementally darker - and colder - teaching us that change is literally in the air. And all we're invited to do in these early days of autumn when the sun still warms our skin even as the earth itself is cooling is... notice. Something is different. Carrie Newcomer puts it like this in a poem she calls, "Because There Is Not Enough Time." 

I used to think
That because life is short
I should do more be more
squeeze more
into each and every day.
I'd walk around with a stick ruler
with increasing numbers
as the measure of fullness.

But lately
I've sensed
a different response
to a lack of time.
Felt in my bones
The singular worth
of each passing moment.
Perhaps the goal
is not to spend this day
Power skiing atop an ocean of multi-tasking.
Maybe the idea is to swim slower
surer
dive deeper
and really look around.

There is a difference between
A life of width
and a life of depth.

Depth is what the early Christians honored in life, love, worship and time. We know this by the once normative, but now largely forgotten, organization of each day. In his survey of "the origins of the Christian Year" in Holidays and Holy Nights, Christopher Hill writes that the first followers of Jesus continued a contemplative practice shaped by the contours of Jewish daily prayer.  As the Jesus movement grew, taking shape in the innovations of the monastic mothers and fathers of the Egyptian and Sinai deserts, the Daily Office or Divine Liturgy of the Hours helped "sanctify the cycle of each day." (p. 17)

The Christian day is about responding to the nature of the hour, not working to a schedule. Thus, the proper question (in life) is not, "What time is it?" Rather, we should ask, "What is it time for?" Work or leisure, community or solitude, waking or rest, praying, eating, reading? In the holy rhythm of this day, each part of the whole is expressed through one of the "hours." (p. 18)

To give shape and form to the sanctification of time, the monastics of the desert borrowed a tool from the Roman Empire. For the Romans, an hour "does not refer to sixty minutes of clock time... (but rather the division) of the day into three-hour periods." In this Christian context the hours "became more like a small season within a small year every day." There were three night vigils of Matins (6-9 pm, 9 to midnight, 12-3 am) that called the day into being. The the Hour of Prime (3-6 am) followed by Lauds to greet the dawn. Terce (6-9 am), Sext (9 to noon), None (noon to 3 pm) ordered the day before the community and each individual prepared for the night with Vespers (3-6 pm) and Compline at 6 pm. Hill notes that:

Dividing the day in this way reverses the profane sense of time: the clock now becomes a servant of the holy human pattern (rather than the master.) (p.p. 17-18)

Christians also organized their week around the resurrection of Jesus using Sun-day, the first of seven days, to symbolically honor the blessed light of the Lord. In this "Sunday became the first distinctly Christian holy day... for from the start it was not just a commemoration of a past event, but a real reenactment, on a spiritual level, of the resurrection within each individual. This pattern would hold true for the whole Christian ordering of time." (p. 18) Time became a tool for growing in trust: each day had spiritual meaning based upon the Resurrection as did each week. It was not long before each season gave shape and form to the reality of Christ's life, death, resurrection and ascension, too.

Amidst the chaos and clutter of my culture - where the President acts as the Buffoon and Bully-in-Chief and the values of sharing and justice I cherish are discarded for illusions of power and cheap trinkets - the steadfast wisdom of the seasons says slow down. Look for what lasts. And matters. Go for depth, not width. "Be still - and know that I am God." This madness will not last. It will die as autumn dies. This death will be hard. Demanding and harrowing. But fear not, death is not the end of the story. St. Paul grasped this when he wrote near the end of his earthly life: I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. (Romans 8:38-39) God has given us signs in the seasons concerning what is true, noble, pure and lasting.  Paul Simon got it - and is now stepping away from the frantic pace of the road. I am learning it, too as I walk in the woods.

Perhaps the goal
is not to spend this day
Power skiing atop an ocean of multi-tasking.
Maybe the idea is to swim slower
surer
dive deeper
and really look around.