Ecclesiastes 3.1-8 (CEB):
There’s a season for everything
and a time for every matter
under the heavens:
a time for giving birth
and a time for dying,
a time for planting and a time for
uprooting what was planted,
a time for killing and a time for healing,
a time for tearing down
and a time for building up,
a time for crying and a time for laughing,
a time for mourning
and a time for dancing,
a time for throwing stones
and a time for gathering stones,
a time for embracing
and a time for avoiding embraces,
a time for searching
and a time for losing,
a time for keeping
and a time for throwing away,
a time for tearing
and a time for repairing,
a time for keeping silent
and a time for speaking,
a time for loving and a time for hating,
a time for war and a time for peace.
As we begin, take a few moments to envision your own life concerning this scripture. Then, ask yourself what came to mind—memories of the past? A present concern? A sense of anticipation for what’s next? Hold that thought.
Many of us read Qoheleth linearly, as sequences of cause and effect. We are born, and then we die, we plant, and then we harvest, we gather stones, and then we throw them, one thing after another, often dichotomies.
But the author wrote not to remind us that all things change over time, or that two things are in opposition, but rather so we would understand the present differently. Ecclesiastes invites us to fully experience the present moment, with no expectation of return to a golden era, nor movement into a shiny new future.
Qoheleth is not writing and then syllogisms, but instead, is writing from the infinite spacetime of God’s universal now, which is never and then, but always both and.
It’s an important distinction because there is a difference between “there is a time for being born, and then there is a time for dying,” and “there is a time for being born AND a time for dying,” which is what the author intends.
Ecclesiastes is not about and then. It is about now.
now is a time for both living and dying.
now is a time for both planting and harvesting.
now is a time for both destruction and building.
now is a time for both laughing and crying.
Not and then. Now is the time for things to be happening, and in fact, planting and harvesting, birth and death, destruction and construction, are all taking place around the world right now. Simultaneously.
Everything is now.
Ecclesiastes is a spiritual work and speaks to spiritual, not human time. Theologians use fancy Greek words like Kronos referring to the way humans track time through clocks and calendars, and Kairos, describing God’s time, “the right time.” Our ancestors believed that God did things when God was good and ready to do them. For 21st Century process theologians like us, we understand that time is as much about biology as it is about physics. Different beings experience time in different ways. Dogs, for example, age very differently from humans.
However, despite the appearance of linear finitude in this reality, the fundamental particles of the material world—the subatomic stuff that makes bigger objects like you and me and our furry friends—exists simultaneously in all times. These multidimensional particles are God’s building blocks. The discovery implies that God’s time, the time in which our reality exists, is non-linear and all-encompassing.
Humans, however, distinguish time linearly, with start and endpoints. It appears to us that most things on Earth, including people, grow old and die. And that is indeed the way time functions in our kronos-based reality.
Only, that’s not the way the universe works. That’s not the way God works. Our sense of time is but a femtosecond blink in the eye of a cosmos for which time is irrelevant. God works in universal, non-linear, Kairos time.
To give this somewhat dry term some meaning, though, think of Kairos, universal time (which is non-time), plainly as Spiritual Time. Spiritual Time has no beginning or end. It exists only and ever in the present, God’s eternal now.
Spiritual Time is God’s eternal now and requires no perception of beginning or end.
Humans have difficulty living in Spiritual Time because it seems impermanent, perhaps even irreverent. But, thinking in Spiritual Time is a useful practice that not only connects us powerfully to God but also helps us deal with events like pandemics that radically disrupt the status quo.
And disruption is the point of Spiritual Time.
Living in Spiritual Time helps us recognize that the status quo to which we so long to return was evil and corrupt, so best left alone. A desire to “return to normal” is contrary to everything we understand about reality as spiritual beings, and it is certainly not what Jesus expects from us.
As his followers, we are to lead the world into an expanded awareness of God’s presence and activity, into a new era, in fact—the age of Spiritual Time. We never do that by going back to “normal,” especially since we seem to forget that “normal” was violent, abusive, inequitable, greedy, selfish, and fear-mongering.
In Spiritual Time, there is no going back to normal. Normal is now. Every now that can never again be what once was.
Our nascent understanding of Spiritual Time causes talk of “getting back to normal.” Opening sports arenas and theaters, forcing children back to school—it all speaks to the lack of imagination prevalent in people living in linear, cause and effect, and then time.
Not that it matters. God is hatching a new normal, much less fixed on linear, physical time. Kairos is breaking in. God’s time is here, slowing us down, forcing us to reconsider our role in relation to our planet, our brothers and sisters, our faith.
In Spiritual Time, we understand there is no need to return to the past. Ultimately, there is no perception of history—past, present, or future. God lives in us and brings us into the eternal now. Qoheleth wants us to at least start thinking about living that way too, in the always now of God, even if it seems a daunting task. But what that is worthwhile is not daunting?
I encourage us to rethink pandemic life, not as a temporary stop on the way back to Mainstreet, USA, (a horrifying place anyway for too many Americans). Instead, consider this moment, like all moments, as the always now. Be unconcerned about what came before or what comes next. Focus on this moment. Find God right now. Be the most faithful, God-loving person you can be right now. That’s all that matters, because focused on God right now moves us to create God’s realm right now.
So, instead of praying for a return to a yesterday that never was, let’s instead start embracing Spiritual Time and participating in God’s creation of something radically, wonderfully new. Let’s stay focused on the eternal now in our midst. God is providing an opportunity to abolish every corrupt system forever. Let’s embrace it.
Amen.
Question: What do you find most encouraging about living in Spiritual Time? Most difficult?
