Advent - 2nd Sunday - unbound by time
He is Alpha and Omega; He the source, the ending He.
Mouse's world is very black and white and quantifiable. A soul, a God, life after death; these things are not quantifiable. I will not make my son mouth my beliefs if they are not truely his, but sometimes our differences are a sharp relief. Particularly at Christmas. For him, about gifts; for me, about that One Gift that is above all other gifts.
It is the inconsistencies of Faith, the core contradictions, that drive Mouse away. How does one celebrate the birth of a Being who was there at the beginning of time; the Word made flesh; that Word that called the stars to bring Light out of the darkness born as a human is born, to a world of pain and hunger and poverty and oppression. God Incarnate as the child of an unwed mother in an occupied country...
It is a manifestation of kairos, not chronos. Time as a wild essential thing, not regulated by clocks and logic. Even in the incarnation of birth, Christ is not bound to clock time as we are, but is with us at all times, in kairos. Human and divine. Unquantifiable, known only to Faith.
Let us view with joy and mirth
All the clocks upon the earth
Holding time with busy tocking
Ticking booming clanging clocking
Anxiously unraveling
Time's traveling
Through the stars and winds and tides.
Who can tell where time abides?
Foolish clocks, all time was broken
When that first great Word was spoken.
Cease we now this silly fleeing
From earth's time, for time's a being
And adoring
Bows before him
Who upon the throne is seated.
Time, defeated, wins, is greeted.
Clocks know not time's loving wonder
Day above as night swings under,
Turning always to the son,
Time's begun, is done, does run
Singing warning
Of the morning
Time, mass, space, a mystery
Of eternal trinity.
Time needs make no poor apology
For bursting forth from man's chronology
Laughs in glee as human hours
Dance before the heavenly powers.
Time's undone
Because the Son
Swiftly calls the coming light
That will end the far-spent night.
-- Madeline l'Engle
The night is far spent. The day is at hand.
Mouse's world is very black and white and quantifiable. A soul, a God, life after death; these things are not quantifiable. I will not make my son mouth my beliefs if they are not truely his, but sometimes our differences are a sharp relief. Particularly at Christmas. For him, about gifts; for me, about that One Gift that is above all other gifts.
It is the inconsistencies of Faith, the core contradictions, that drive Mouse away. How does one celebrate the birth of a Being who was there at the beginning of time; the Word made flesh; that Word that called the stars to bring Light out of the darkness born as a human is born, to a world of pain and hunger and poverty and oppression. God Incarnate as the child of an unwed mother in an occupied country...
It is a manifestation of kairos, not chronos. Time as a wild essential thing, not regulated by clocks and logic. Even in the incarnation of birth, Christ is not bound to clock time as we are, but is with us at all times, in kairos. Human and divine. Unquantifiable, known only to Faith.
Let us view with joy and mirth
All the clocks upon the earth
Holding time with busy tocking
Ticking booming clanging clocking
Anxiously unraveling
Time's traveling
Through the stars and winds and tides.
Who can tell where time abides?
Foolish clocks, all time was broken
When that first great Word was spoken.
Cease we now this silly fleeing
From earth's time, for time's a being
And adoring
Bows before him
Who upon the throne is seated.
Time, defeated, wins, is greeted.
Clocks know not time's loving wonder
Day above as night swings under,
Turning always to the son,
Time's begun, is done, does run
Singing warning
Of the morning
Time, mass, space, a mystery
Of eternal trinity.
Time needs make no poor apology
For bursting forth from man's chronology
Laughs in glee as human hours
Dance before the heavenly powers.
Time's undone
Because the Son
Swiftly calls the coming light
That will end the far-spent night.
-- Madeline l'Engle
The night is far spent. The day is at hand.