End of the Year Thoughts about Time and Grief
So here we are, into the last day of 2018.
Where has the time gone?
I hope this year has been good to you, dear reader. I hope that the next year is even better.
I've been thinking about time today. I've been thinking about it because we are about to turn to a new calendar. I've also been thinking about it because of the way I've spent this year in often still grief, still, in many ways, in the shadow of October, 2017.
It's true enough that we are all "captives," as Joni Mitchell once wrote, "captives on a carousel in time." Her song is light and easy, but it has undertones to it, especially in the idea that in the yearly round of seasons, our aging is sometimes perceptible.
As for the grief that my family has worked through this year, it has reminded us of this circle game. Some days find us well and productive and telling jokes. Other days, because of some trigger, we remember the loss of our son and brother, remember whom we've left behind. Much of the cycle has come from the return of days, holidays, and seasons. These are periods we face with new quiet.
Linear Time
But I was also thinking today that for us, for human beings, time is linear. There is an end to time. There is a quality about time that puts us on a plot line (and I think this not only because I am a male). We are on a journey, and this suggests that in the cycles we travel, we experience life as episodes, as periods, even as eras. We pass through one event and move on to another. We experience new meetings and acquaintances, and we experience departures. We are moving, and most of us don't have a vivid picture of where we are going. We only recognize this journey aspect to our lives as we somehow lose track of people and find new people becoming important. It is difficult to return to those earlier "stages" as we call them, except in memory.
In the declining years of the Roman Empire, the Roman writer Boethius was put in prison and sentenced to death. His crime was that he had supported the last Emperor, and the new Emperor would not tolerate this. In jail, Boethius wrote his most famous book, which he named The Consolation of Philosophy. I read it years ago as a graduate student, and I liked it so much I read it three times during that season of my life. What still stands out to me today is the depiction of the Roman goddess Fortuna and her presiding over what, in so many words, is referred to as the Wheel of Fortune. This all comes out in the book when Lady Philosophy appears to Boethius in prison and enlightens the suffering narrator that this life puts us on this cycle between good and bad fortune, and that always, while we are enjoying good will and prosperity, there are others in the world who are on the other side of the wheel, people who are suffering and in great pain and poverty at the same time that we are enjoying our lives. Lady Philosophy compels Boethius to recognize the transience of both pleasure and pain, to leave the wheel of fortune, and to get beyond the pattern of this life. This, she argues, can only be done through the consolation of philosophy.
One of the other strong passages of this book that still remains with me to this day occurs late in the text when Lady Philosophy leads Boethius to contemplate eternity, rather than cyclical and linear time as we know it on Earth. This idea of eternity was deeply suggestive and moving to none other than C.S. Lewis, who in writing The Great Divorce drew on Boethius' idea of eternity as consisting of all moments at once.
The idea is impossible to imagine--Lewis depicts his narrator in his book as swooning at the thought. But it is something to consider, this sense that while we are on a journey, God is still, in all moments, eternally present with us. This contemplation can bring solace, especially as we become wrapped up in the fortunes of the next year.
May you enjoy good fortune. But may you read some good books that stay with you and maybe even encourage you to think about the journey we are on in some fresh, even new ways.
Happy New Year.
Thank you for reading.
Where has the time gone?
I hope this year has been good to you, dear reader. I hope that the next year is even better.
I've been thinking about time today. I've been thinking about it because we are about to turn to a new calendar. I've also been thinking about it because of the way I've spent this year in often still grief, still, in many ways, in the shadow of October, 2017.
It's true enough that we are all "captives," as Joni Mitchell once wrote, "captives on a carousel in time." Her song is light and easy, but it has undertones to it, especially in the idea that in the yearly round of seasons, our aging is sometimes perceptible.
As for the grief that my family has worked through this year, it has reminded us of this circle game. Some days find us well and productive and telling jokes. Other days, because of some trigger, we remember the loss of our son and brother, remember whom we've left behind. Much of the cycle has come from the return of days, holidays, and seasons. These are periods we face with new quiet.
Linear Time
But I was also thinking today that for us, for human beings, time is linear. There is an end to time. There is a quality about time that puts us on a plot line (and I think this not only because I am a male). We are on a journey, and this suggests that in the cycles we travel, we experience life as episodes, as periods, even as eras. We pass through one event and move on to another. We experience new meetings and acquaintances, and we experience departures. We are moving, and most of us don't have a vivid picture of where we are going. We only recognize this journey aspect to our lives as we somehow lose track of people and find new people becoming important. It is difficult to return to those earlier "stages" as we call them, except in memory.
In the declining years of the Roman Empire, the Roman writer Boethius was put in prison and sentenced to death. His crime was that he had supported the last Emperor, and the new Emperor would not tolerate this. In jail, Boethius wrote his most famous book, which he named The Consolation of Philosophy. I read it years ago as a graduate student, and I liked it so much I read it three times during that season of my life. What still stands out to me today is the depiction of the Roman goddess Fortuna and her presiding over what, in so many words, is referred to as the Wheel of Fortune. This all comes out in the book when Lady Philosophy appears to Boethius in prison and enlightens the suffering narrator that this life puts us on this cycle between good and bad fortune, and that always, while we are enjoying good will and prosperity, there are others in the world who are on the other side of the wheel, people who are suffering and in great pain and poverty at the same time that we are enjoying our lives. Lady Philosophy compels Boethius to recognize the transience of both pleasure and pain, to leave the wheel of fortune, and to get beyond the pattern of this life. This, she argues, can only be done through the consolation of philosophy.
One of the other strong passages of this book that still remains with me to this day occurs late in the text when Lady Philosophy leads Boethius to contemplate eternity, rather than cyclical and linear time as we know it on Earth. This idea of eternity was deeply suggestive and moving to none other than C.S. Lewis, who in writing The Great Divorce drew on Boethius' idea of eternity as consisting of all moments at once.
The idea is impossible to imagine--Lewis depicts his narrator in his book as swooning at the thought. But it is something to consider, this sense that while we are on a journey, God is still, in all moments, eternally present with us. This contemplation can bring solace, especially as we become wrapped up in the fortunes of the next year.
May you enjoy good fortune. But may you read some good books that stay with you and maybe even encourage you to think about the journey we are on in some fresh, even new ways.
Happy New Year.
Thank you for reading.
posted by Thomas Allbaugh @ 10:18 PM
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