Time Shifting
Rev. Kathleen Ellis
2 April 2006

A few weeks ago Rebecca and Chuck and I were discussing music for future services, and we came to April 2.  Since my calendar indicated that today would mark the change to Daylight Savings Time, I began thinking about time and our relationship to it.  Thus a sermon theme was born.

Today we lost the hour that we gratefully received last fall.  For a moment I’d thought it would get dark earlier, but John Iacoletti reminded me that we’ll actually have more light.  I knew that!

To avoid confusion in the future, my new memory trick is “lose the hour, gain the light”—and vice versa for Fall.  Except for a few areas of the country, we have grown somewhat accustomed to a few days of adjustment to an artificial calculation.

The usual array of watches and clocks has made us more conscious of the passage of time.  The use of sundials or working outside on a daily basis helps people develop an innate sense of the passage of time.

Last Tuesday during our vespers service, Antaro Burke shared his UU faith journey in about ten minutes.  He began with a lament that individuals half his age had preceded him, so he figured he deserved at least twenty minutes!

Later that evening, in The Story of My Life class, I read my own spiritual autobiography to the group.  The writing took about five hours, or 300 minutes.  Rounding up my age, that means an average of five minutes of writing time per year of my life.  But I skipped the first few years, and the rest of the years were not created equal.  Some of them received considerably more attention than others.  Undoubtedly many spiritually significant events have been lost—to time and to my selective memory. 

Other ways to measure my story are the word count of about 3400 words, 30 minutes of reading time, or roughly 60 words per year.  It begins to sound very mechanical when I break it down like that, but any kind of life summary will be condensed to the most significant highlights and lowlights.

Time stretches or contracts according to multiple factors.  For kids, time seems to slow down in anticipation of birthdays or other special events; it slows in an emergency, when all senses focus on the immediate action. Yet a month goes by in a flash; evolution is measured in eons; computers operate in nanoseconds; Zen meditation focuses on the present moment in its fullness.

The other day on the Current channel, I watched a few minutes of skateboard accidents.  In rapid succession, young men landed badly and wiped out while I winced at the sight.  But whenever I have fallen or been in a car accident, time seems to move much more slowly.  The external world goes away and all my attention is focused on the details of the inevitable crash.

The older I get, the faster go the months.  Though I scan my calendar for coming weeks and months, it’s usually upon looking back that I wonder how the month or year has gone by so quickly.  It’s already April!  The fourth month of the calendar year!

Moments that seem to go so slowly are often connected to some future event.  When I’m absorbed in a task, unexpected amounts of time go by before I look up.  Boredom and pleasure have their impact on the perception of time.

From nanoseconds to eons, every division of time influences our perspective.  Over time, mountains rise and canyons carve the earth; plants and animals mutate into new forms; others become extinct.  But wait for news from a missing loved one, a package or a crucial phone call and there’s a tendency to become anxious.  You may even give up hope then suddenly—it appears.  Or not.  Your level of anxiety has no effect except on yourself. 

Charlie Badenhop wrote about the relationship to time:

“Have you ever thought about how your orientation to time profoundly affects the way you are in the world?  Each culture has its own unique way of relating to the concept of "time".  Some cultures perceive time as a room that is lived in.  The "room" of time is a constant that stays the same, as we change during the course of our lives.  American culture seems more and more to think of time as a commodity of which there is never enough.  When time is "wasted" a person misses out on an opportunity that may never present itself again.  Still other cultures experience time as being circular, without a beginning or an end, and with no clear markers as to past, present, and future.  No matter how we think about it, our relationship to time has a profound impact on what we believe is possible.”

What we believe to be possible is both a limitation and an opportunity.  We can multitask if necessary, but we can’t create more time. Prisoners are locked away for a period of time, some for the rest of their lives; others for several years. It requires a difficult adjustment to manage time on someone else's schedule. Every day becomes generally monotonous, which is both a blessing and a curse.  It's boring most of the time, but the blessing is that days go by without really distinguishing one from another. And so the prisoners wait out their terms, adjust to new cellmates from time to time, and try not to cause trouble because the trouble will fall back on their own heads.

Along with the tedium of prison life there is a quiet marking of calendars, a constant recalculation of how much time remains. Some wonder if they'll be paroled at all; some know they'll never get out alive. The ones who do get closer to a release date begin to say, "This time next year . . . ; “six months from now . . ." They'll know how many months or weeks remain on the sentence.  And they start to get anxious.

What should happen first?  Get a place to stay, a job, transportation, a license.  Who will hire them?  Who will rent to them? Expenses mount up--rent, utilities, insurance--it's all out here waiting--yet getting that job is a huge hurdle.  No longer subject to jailhouse rules, former inmates have to structure their own time to meet all the demands.

Another group of people are imprisoned by physical or mental condition, either their parents' illness or their own.  They have to adjust their schedules to accommodate any number of challenges. Depression, agoraphobia, bipolar disease, alcoholism, MS, fibromyalgia, you name it. They may be housebound or they may need extra time to get ready or to get to a place. When I was sick with hepatitis, my goal after the hospital was to gain enough strength to take a shower without total exhaustion. Parents of young children need copious amounts of energy--or extra help--to keep up with their young ones.  All of these kinds of challenges affect our relationship to time.

The time in my life falls naturally into three broad categories:  shapeless, deliberate, or conscious. 

Shapeless time turns me into my own greatest enemy.  I can fill it with email.  I can turn to the computer for just a moment and look up to discover that an hour or more has been swept away.  A crossword puzzle can eat up 20-30 minutes; looking for misplaced items takes way too much of my time; going downstairs for another random snack not only takes time but adds calories.  Then I’ll notice something that needs cleaning or organizing, or especially a book that needs reading, and I may be off on another tangent.

Deliberate time follows a plan.  Julie Morgenstern, who wrote the bestseller Organizing from the Inside Out also has a book called Time Management from the Inside Out.  Morgenstern compares cluttered schedules with a cluttered closet.