By the Way: We only think we can change the time

By Rev. Oz Lorentzen on November 9, 2024.

My dog hates the time change. Since she knows it is really 5 o’clock – supper time – when it is now only 4, she is convinced that we are being inscrutably and arbitrarily mean to her. And she is right, of course.

We only think that we can change the time -we are, as much as she is, conditioned by real time, the cycle of the days and the cycle of the seasons. We only think we can transcend these limits, and the advantages of technology aid us in that dream. That idea that we can push ourselves beyond natural limits exacts a great and grave toll – ask anyone who was raised by workaholics.

We, as much as my dog, are creatures of the cycles of time and nature. So much so that I think it a mystery how we, in the western world, developed the idea of progress, that time is linear and not circular, and that things (as a hope at least) are getting better. This is one of the great, and perhaps unacknowledged, legacies of the Judeo-Christian worldview upon which our civilizations are built.

The Eastern worldviews with a cyclical quality of all – time, space, persons, matter, creatures – are more intuitive: After all, it is fall again (already!) with winter close on its heels; but I can already comfort myself with spring’s return and the memories/anticipation of hot summer days. And, if I am honest, like all else this cycle after so many turns is making things worse – I like all else am getting old, weathering… Since my experience disproves the idea of progress, it must come from something else.

This idea of progress (upon which not just our worldview, but modern science is founded) has to come from outside our experience of time. We owe a great debt to this idea and its source.

It is just such a reference point, one outside of time and the cycles of time, which can give meaning, a goal, a purpose and direction that transcends the negative inertia of entropy and the bewilderment of too many goes on the merry-go-round we call life.

Rev. Oz Lorentzen is the pastor at St. Barnabas Anglican

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