There are two kinds
of time.
There is chronos, or chronological time, we
measure in hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, millennia, ages...
and there is kairos time, we experience as
having the time of our life, or as going through a particularly tough time.
The Church year is divided
into Seasonal time and Ordinary time.
The Seasonal half—itself separated into the
Christmas Cycle (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany) and the Easter Cycle (Lent,
Eastertide, Pentecost)—relates to kairos.
The rest of the year—a small interlude between the
Christmas and Easter Cycles, and the long weeks between the Easter and
Christmas Cycles—relates to chronos. That is why we call it Ordinary,
as in ordinal numbers: the first, second, third, fourth, fifth etc. etc. weeks.
We’ve just gone back into Ordinary time. Which isn’t
to say that we don’t experience kairos joy and sorrow, but, rather, that
we learn to pay attention to time passing.
Elijah gave me a little book of Greta Thunberg’s
speeches for Fathers Day yesterday. Which is a great way to begin Ordinary
time.
Wake up! We are running out of time to
fundamentally change the way we collectively live...
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