Hope and Time - Simple and Natural Rhythms
Three photos...photographed in the span of about an hour on Friday morning. Two speak of a simple way of telling time and the third just a simple, beautiful moment.
The moon was gorgeous on Friday morning as we went out. It was setting in the western sky and was low-ish to the horizon so it looked not only bigger (horizon illusion) but also with a bit more color. I had time on my mind not only because of the OnBeing theme this week but also as I was quietly talking through my sermon for Sunday. In the message I’ll be sharing some elements of my faith story - reflecting on the passage of time and the progression of my journey with Jesus.
There’s such a beautiful simplicity to reflecting on marking time not with the exactness of our watches and clocks but by the rhythms of nature. When the sun goes down and the moon rises, it is dark and the day is ending - time for rest. When the moon rises and the sun comes up, the day is beginning - time for the activities of life. Living in this way aligns us with the rhythms of nature and isn’t affected by artificial changes like daylight savings time or spring forward / fall back. But the actual practice of it is likely completely unknown to most of us.
About an hour later, this was the scene from the campground at the lake.
The moon (behind me at this time) was now below the horizon and the sun was starting its movement well above. Another rhythm, another cycle, in a countless history of them. How many times has the sun risen and set and similarly with the moon?
I think of the Joy Harjo conversation from OnBeing and her sharing about the rhythms of her indigenous ancestors. They understood the rhythms of the earth, of the seasons, of nature and they sought to live in harmony with those rhythms as best as possible. They didn’t seek to overcome or overpower them but to live with them. It sounds really really nice but also feels rather impossible to achieve today.
When I started writing this today, I wasn’t sure how the third photo fit in until I actually started writing. The third photo is a simple one, a few branches poking up from the water that looked like praying hands when I first saw them. I was going to simply share it beacuse “hey, this is cool” but I started thinking about the rhythms we see of Jesus in the Gospels. He had a rhythm and a routine - we read many times of him going off to pray, “as was his custom.” There was a regularity to his practice of prayer, of solitude, of connecting with God. So these praying hands...a reminder toward practices, not necessarily of habit or rigitidy, but rhythm. A regularity of practice that moves along with the flow of life and nature.
These rhythms connect us with something(s) far beyond ourselves. This connection is not only in the present moment but also to the past. In the
episode, Krista Tippett shares this:Years ago, when I did a show about Einstein and spoke with another physicist about Einstein’s sense of time, he said that what Einstein really did with high physics is restore time to the heart of nature, where it had always been in traditional cultures, in human cultures, and that is time as seasonal, cyclical, generational.1
I love that idea of the greatest scientist in history drawing us back to time as part of the rhythms of nature.
As we practice these rhythms, hope can emerge. Hope can emerge as we become present to the rhythms that have guided those who came before us. We can become more aware of the fullness of their stories and how individual moments connect and flow into each other. We can see how their stories are a part of ours as well. Throughout the stories of the Bible, we see this shared. Many times in the Jewish Scriptures, we hear “remember you were enslaved in Egypt and the Lord redeemed (set free) you.” This reminds the people of what God had done before and what God can and would do again. There are many Psalms that recount the history of the people as a message of hope for the present. In the New Testament, we have other examples of this as different people recount God’s working in their histories - the followers of Jesus telling others what they had all witnessed or, later on, writers connecting their ancestors stories to the work of Jesus. Hope emerges.
Hope can emerge as we connect to these stories but also connecting to our own. We can see the movements in our past and how hope can flow out of those times into our present moment. Slowing down from the artificialness of how we try to control time gives space for the rhythms of hope to begin to dance within our present and into our future.
There’s a beautiful song by
that speaks to this rhythm. It is called “The Speed of Soul” and the chorus has a line that feels like a combination of lament, challenge, and encouragement all together. It simply says that we’ve “been traveling faster than our souls can go. Faster than our souls can go.” Here’s the full song:So I hope you can find a space for connecting with the natural rhythms of life today.
One quick “programming” note - the next Pop Culture Pastors Hour with
and me will be on Wednesday, July 23 at 2pm ET. We’ll be talking about the first several episodes of the HBO miniseries, Station Eleven. It is based on the book of the same name by Emily St John Mandel. The show is available to stream from HBO Max.Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed
PS - A pup with purple flowers from yesterday morning
https://onbeing.org/programs/joy-harjo-hope-portal-episode-6/
I am quite behind on my emails as I Beas very busy in Peru and The Galapagos. I enjoyed your thoughts, pictures and the song.
💞