Spirit Journal – February 2019

“Unless we allow the mystery of the Divine Feminine to flow into, irradiate, illumine, and penetrate every area of our activity and to create in them all harmony, justice, peace, love, ecstasy, and balance, we will die out and take nature, or a large part of it, with us. Unless we embrace Lady Wisdom in all her subtlety and flexibility, and also searing love dissolving all structures and dogmas, all prisons in which we have so passionately imprisoned ourselves—we are lost.” (Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother, adapted with permission).

The Book of Genesis tells us that reality is tohu va-vohu(1:2): wild, chaotic, and incapable of holding form. The Book of Ecclesiastes agrees: ha kol havel, says The Teacher, everything is impermanent and fluid; nothing lasts (1:2).  Lady Wisdom is this wildness, and hence the best guide to living with it. Her teachings, embedded in the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, are passionate and powerful calls to understand the nature of reality and how best to live in it simply, boldly, justly, and with a deep sense of grace. Our goal in this workshop is to learn how to do just that.

About Rabbi Rami Shapiro, PhD

Rabbi Rami is a Jewish practitioner of Perennial Wisdom and an award–winning author of more than thirty books on religion and spirituality. He received rabbinical ordination from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, and holds a PhD in religion from Union Graduate School.  A chaplain with the USAF for three years, a congregational rabbi for 20, and a professor of religious studies for 10, Rabbi Rami currently helps direct the One River Foundation (www.oneriverfoundation.org), writes the Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler column for Spirituality and Health magazine, and hosts the magazine’s weekly radio show, Essential Conversations with Rabbi Rami. His newest book is The World Wisdom Bible (Turner Publishing).

For complete Living Wisdom program information and registration, please visit our website.

Timing

Timing isn’t everything.  But a lot of things in life never get off the ground if you don’t “seize the day.”  Other things never get finished.   On the other hand, some things get done too quickly, hence, poorly, for lack of patience to allow them to mature.

And the need for timing is sometimes sudden, requiring acute watchfulness down to the moment.   Just try to tell a joke without paying close attention to timing.  Or make a soufflé, but then dawdle before presenting it at table.  As the following aphorism from Proverbs tells us, paying attention to the moment also contributes to the value of a spoken word:

“Golden apples in silver settings

are words spoken at the proper time.”  (25:11, NAB)

The Sages of ancient Israel knew the value of learning how to work with time.   And they had a lot to say about it in their writings–Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, and Ecclesiasticus.

But these Sages weren’t the only ones who knew the value of becoming partners with, rather than fighting against, time.  Consider, for instance, the familiar advice to “seize the day,” a phrase that originated with the poet Horace.   Interestingly, a more picturesque, and more literal translation of his advice is to “pluck the day…for it is ripe.”[1] And that’s just what Linda did!  She didn’t sit around, waiting for some illusive “golden opportunity.” Instead, she ”seized the day,” jump-starting her career by making the most of a less-than-ideal space for her first gallery opening…even before she graduated!

By contrast, consider what Sophia (the Hebraic persona of wisdom) has to say about the sluggard, a character she loves to take pot-shots at.  Seize the day?  Not the sluggard!  The only thing the sluggard seizes, Sophia chortles, is the bed!  Here’s how she says it:

As a door turns on its hinges,

so a sluggard turns on his bed.”  (Proverbs 26:14)

It’s a clever bit of sarcasm, you discover, once you unpack the imagery.

A door is a thing—at least when it is opened–meant to be passed through; as such, it is one of the most active of all architectural elements, a fact hinted at in this proverb by emphasizing the ability of the hinge to cause a door to turn.  By contrast, a bed is the epitome of inactivity.  It’s a comical image, then–a “door” with the power of the hinge – to create an opening through which one might then pass – that is uselessly flipping back and forth on top of a bed!  But that’s just what a sluggard is—useless!  No matter how loud opportunity knocks, the sluggard just turns over and continues to snooze…hence, to lose.

The basic principle the Sages had learned can be stated succinctly:  there’s a “proper time” for every human activity such that one can learn to identify it and, importantly, become skilled at working with it.   The folk singer and writer Pete Seeger once made a popular folk tune based on the most eloquent, biblical expression of this principle (recorded in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).  As the song goes:

To everything

turn, turn, turn

there is a season

turn, turn, turn

and a time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die…

(…and, in my case, a time to woo and a time for woe!)

Is Time Our Adversary?

But, hey, I’m not the only one who could benefit from paying more attention to timing! In fact, our whole culture seems pretty much out-of-sync with the natural rhythms of life.  On one hand, we act as if time were an enemy.  On the other hand, we schizophrenically cling to it as a precious commodity which we try to manipulate with our “time-saving” devices.  And yet, when we do find ourselves with a bit of spare time on our hands, we often don’t know anything better to do with it than to “kill” it!

When’s the last time you pulled your smart phone from its holster to kill off a few minutes…or a few hours?

Mostly we seem locked into an adversarial relationship with time, experiencing it as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a force of nature we can cultivate to our advantage.

Such a perspective seems to have been one of the points filmmaker Godfrey Reggio was making with his experimental film, Koyaanisqatsi.  The title comes from the Hopi language, and it means “unbalanced life.”  To say that our culture is out-of-balance with life is, in the face of global warming, a gross understatement…bordering on apocalyptic, actually.  And one dimension where we can easily see this imbalance is in our relationship with time.

Consider, for example, our current age’s obsession with our electronic devices.  Nothing sucks up more time than these electrified sponges!  And this is ironic, considering their sales pitch is perpetually focused on lauding their time-saving capacity with faster and faster “next-g networks.” But the “time-saving” claim is a deception.   The truth of it is these devices eat more time than a ravenous beast!   If you aren’t careful, you can waste entire evenings seated in front of a screen–watching stupid human tricks on Youtube, binge-watching Netflix shows, or surfing the net…to say nothing of the time sink that lurks within every video game! One might even wonder if these devices constitute a contemporary mutation of the vampire—time-pires, we might call them—sinking their teeth into our temporal necks and sucking, minute by minute, then hour by hour, and day by day, the brief life of every unsuspecting subscriber[2], turning otherwise disciplined lives into electrified sluggards.

An Organic Relationship with Time

We’re slowly learning to listen to nature when it comes to nutrition, recognizing the wisdom of eating “real food.”[3]  We’d do well, then, to take the same approach towards time so as to recover an organic relationship with it.  Echoing Michael Pollan’s advice, then, we might choose “real time” over against the addictive lure of “virtual reality.” Sure, that’s going to slow us down.  It will make life less dramatic.  (Or, rather, less melodramatic.)   I mean, watch a movie and you can imagine a whole life’s adventure in less than two hours.  But have your own adventurous life?  That takes time!  And effort!  And the willingness to turn off the computer, get out of bed, and pluck the ripe day.

But what, then, is “real time”?  Certainly not digitally illuminated hours, minutes, and seconds.  Nor weeks, months, and Outlook-synced calendar years.  At least these control-oriented cultural markers don’t seem to me to be the place to start.  These are all artificial manipulations of the natural phenomenon.  They’re not wrong.  But they do favor control.  And what I’m talking about has more to do with a relationship in harmony with something that is bedrock…essential…life-giving.  I’m talking about a kind of time that is organic, hence, alive!  (And isn’t that what our slip of the tongue acknowledges when we speak of “killing” it?)

Seasons—spring, summer, winter, and fall—these, and the analogous human amplifications that grow from the rhythm their passage establishes, are natural temporal markers.  As the following proverb demonstrates, the seasons of nature are analogous to, and therefore instructive of, higher order “seasons” of our lives:

A son who gathers in summer is a credit;

a son who slumbers during harvest, a disgrace.”  (Proverbs 10:5, NAB)

Think, for instance, of a project in life which has become “ripe for the harvest.”  One who recognizes this timing will “make hay while the sun shines.”  But one who is too lazy to put in the long hours and rigorous work required to bring home the harvest will be a disgrace not only to herself, but also to others who depend upon the harvest.  Food waste is a problem in our wealthy culture but so, also, is the rot that develops from unharvested human potential.  Don’t just “Bloom where you are” Do it when the time is ripe!  That’ good, organic advice.

Even more immediate to our experience, though, is the measure of the day itself—morning, noon, and night. That’s the framework Daniel Pink adopts in his his entertaining study of timing titled When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.[4]

Regarding the organicity of the day as a measure of time, Pink says this:

“…one unit of time remains beyond our control….  We inhabit a planet that turns on its axis at a steady speed in a regular pattern, exposing us to regular periods of light and dark.  We call each rotation of Earth a day.  The day is perhaps the most important way we divide, configure, and evaluate our time.” (Daniel Pink, The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, p. 6, emphasis added).[5]

To which, then, one might add this chilling reminder Annie Dillard offers us: “How we spend our days, of course, is how we spend our lives.”[6] And then, for the sake of poignancy, we might call to mind and heart the prayer voiced by the writer of Psalm 90.  Having lamented the brevity of life, which he compares to

…the new grass of the morning:

In the morning it springs up new,

but by evening it is dry and withered. (vss.5-6)

He then–beside himself with alarm at this brevity–pleads for compassion:

Teach us to number our days,

That we may gain a heart of wisdom…(vs. 12)

One might also be reminded, then, of the well-worn advice concerning our money: “pay attention to the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.”  Adapting this same advice to another limited commodity—time–we might do well to “pay attention to the days and the years will take care of themselves.”

A Simple Game

A good place to begin, then, in learning how to “number our days,” is with the natural rhythm of the day itself.  In fact, one could even make a game out of it.  It’s a simple game, really; nothing more complex than asking oneself a question.  When is the best time of day to do anything?

Of course, the answers will be different for everyone, given the differing ways we spend our days, as well as our differing bio-rhythmic relationships with the day.[7]  But still, we’re all human.  And every one of us is subject to measuring out our lives in days.

Here’s an example to show you how to play the game.  What’s the best time of day to fill your car with gas?

Not, I suggest, in the morning, on the way to work but, rather, in what we sometimes refer to as “the cool of the day,” the evening.  Why?

If evening is the cool of the day, the morning is most often on fire (at least during the work-week).  That’s the time when we need to “make hay while the sun shines.”  We’re expected to get to work on time.  Oftentimes we’ve got appointments with other people that require timeliness.  The kids need to get to school before the bell rings.  And we’re already behind schedule because we had to make lunches for everyone and taking the dog out for a walk was delayed because we had to hunt down the leash.  There’s just a lot going on in the morning!   Adding a stop at the gas station just makes things all the more rushed.

Besides which, we’re not the only ones who plop down behind the steering wheel in the morning and, having turned the key in the ignition, let out a groan because we see the needle is pointing precariously towards empty.  We rush to the station only to find a long line of cars with other commuters who had made a similar discovery this morning.

In the “cool of the evening,” though, the pace slackens.  The heat of the day has abated.  We may be worn out, but at least we are less rushed.  And the lines at the gas station are shorter.   At this time of day, because one is less rushed, one even stand a chance for those few minutes spent waiting for the tank to fill to become a pool of stillness, perhaps even one tinged with gratitude!

Of course, another way of saying the same thing is to recognize that filling one’s tank with gas on the way home from work is a matter of “thinking ahead.” But I like the way Nietzsche says it: “Care more about tomorrow than you do today.”  And you’ll thank yourself in the morning (when you speed past the gas station, enjoying the peace of mind you’ve bought for yourself)!

Here’s another example, an example that focuses the question more on a situation:  What’s a good reason to, as we say, “call it a day” and leave work early? 

I can think of at least one possible answer: When something goes so wrong with a project as to be worthy of being called a “nightmare.”

Nightmares cause anxiety.  And when a nightmare happens in a project you’ve been working on, there’s a strong temptation to try to fix it right away.  But this is more often than not a reactive, panic response rather than a wise strategy.  Such a response often makes matters worse, a situation we are forever trying to fend off by reminding ourselves, for the umpteenth time, that “haste makes waste.”But if you give yourself a break, go home early, and let the anxiety subside, you often are better prepared to get a “fresh start” in the morning.  But I suggest the need for timing here isn’t just about facing the problem when you are fresh.  I suggest it is equally important to recognize the need for self-compassion in such a situation.  Nightmares have a tendency to beat us up, especially the nightmares that happen mid-day.  Leaving work early, in such a case, is often an act of self-compassion.  The healing one experiences by “sleeping on it” puts one in a much better psychological and spiritual state of well-being in the morning.  Courage comes on the wings of such a morning!

For my third example, I’ll turn to Daniel Pink’s analysis of the day.  When’s the best time of day, he asks, to schedule a colonoscopy?  The critical factor here is the doctor’s ability to detect polyps—small growths in the colon that can be harbingers of cancer.  In research studies focused on this question, doctors displayed a 5% reduction in polyp detection for every hour of the work day that passed.  And the morning versus afternoon differences were dramatic.[8]  Pink recommends, then, that the best time of day to schedule a colonoscopy is before noon.[9]  Not being one to tempt fate, though, I scheduled my recent exam for 8AM!

With these examples in hand,  I leave the game for you to try.  What’s the best time of day to do anything in your life?  But don’t get fixated on winning.  Because this game isn’t about winning or losing so much as it is about giving yourself a chance to experiment with developing a relationship with time as a partner,  someone who can come to your aid in accomplishing life’s tasks, rather than as a time-pire intent on sucking you dry, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day.

But we’re not going to stop here.  This game is only a prelude.

The “Proper Time” Principle

What I’ve been describing is a way of thinking (and living) by analogous relationship with nature.   I’ve suggested working from a natural phenomenon of temporal being—the day itself—to try to learn what we can about the proper time for various human activities is a fruitful approach, one which prepares one to pluck the ripeness of the day.  And since the day itself is an inescapable measure of the condition of being human, we might as well make friends with it.

But the basic principle of the “proper time” can be applied to matters of more consequence as well, matters with considerably more importance to the soul’s well-being than what time of day is best to fill your car with gas.  That’s what we’ll consider in the next installment of this meditation.

[1] “Seize the Day.”  Wikipedia.

[2] Thus making the subscription fee one pays for streaming services the least expensive payment they extract from us!

[3] See In Defense of Food and Food Rules by Michael Pollan.

[4] It is an unfortunate title considering Stuart Albert published a similar study of time, titled When: The Art of Perfect Timing, five years prior to Pink’s book.  Pink covers much of the same territory as Albert though, alas, much more entertainingly.  (Albert’s book, though more precise, is…well…boring.) One wonders, though, why Pink never acknowledges Albert’s work.  But I digress.

[5] Pink overstates the case, though.  In fact, electricity has enabled us to manipulate the day.  And with the advent of streaming video and social media, electricity can become deadly.   A major struggle we face in our daily existence is the struggle to get to bed on time.  Late night snacking is a trivial problem compared to late night binge-watching!

[6] This quote might also call to mind, among those literate in television, the poetic phrase from which a soap opera derived its title: “Like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

[7] This is a point Daniel Pink makes much of, dividing persons into three temporal categories—larks (early risers), owls (“night owls”) and a third category which operates between these extremes which Pink describes as “third bird” people.

[8] Pink, pp. 53-54.

[9] One wonders if we really needed a research study to discover what has long been known about there being a devil who shows up at noonday—the “noonday devil.”

©Jeff Ediger 2019