On Time ~ G Johnson

February 29 lacks a Hallmark card, as far as I know.  Still, I look forward to each February 29. It is not for me an extra day but a needed day, a day that symbolizes restoration. Rituals of the day should include organizing the sock drawer and synchronizing clocks.

Without a February 29 every four years, our local shortest day of the year would drift from December 21 into January in just 41 years, dragging winter along. No joke. At five hundred years with no February 29, we could throw snowballs on July 4 and celebrate Christmas by the pool.  Despite those dire consequences, February 29 doesn't get much respect.  When I am late, no one ever accepts calendar drift as an excuse.

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Jonathan Larson in the musical Rent observed how inadequately clocks and calendars measure time:

   Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
   Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.
   Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
   How do you measure, measure a year?

   In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights,
   In cups of coffee.
   In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.

   In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
   How do you measure a year in the life?

Larson was not the first to notice two kinds of time.  The ancients distinguished kronos time, time reckoned by the sun and moon, by hour glasses, and by marks on the wall.  They made kronos into a person, the precursor of our Father Time. In their statues of him, Kronos is an aged baby-eating giant bearing a grass cutter, cold toward human concerns.

By contrast with scary old Mr. Clock Time Kronos, consider pleasant Mr. Right Time. His name is Kairos. Depictions of Kairos show him as a running youth.

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I would like to hang out with kid Kairos, to prolong his visit.  To do time with Mr. Right Time would be a good time. But look at the wings on his feet. The Right Time can easily zoom by! You might catch him by his forelock. But when he's gone, he's gone.

In Mark 1 Jesus announces:  "The right time has come. The kingdom of God is near! Change your hearts and lives and believe the Good News!"  Paul uses the term:  "But when the right time came, God sent his Son who was born of a woman and lived under the law." "Be wise in the way you act with people who are not believers, making the most of every opportunity."  How do we catch the right time? Paul tells the Galatian believers, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."  Peter says: "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

I am surrounded by calendars and clocks, flawed in that they need a February 29 and other occasional corrections. These technologies rarely help me recognize the right time to speak and the right time to shut up.  For discerning the right time, I need alert patience. 

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