Pondering time
04/12/22 02:40
I can remember wanting to have an 8-track tape player for our car. We never got one. By the time I was old enough to have my own car, I had other priorities over having anything beyond the factory-installed AM radio. I was nearly 30 when I installed the first cassette player in a car. I think the device cost less than $40, but it was a purchase over which I struggled for some time before indulging myself. At the time, we had a fairly decent stereo in our home, with a turntable and a cassette deck that recorded as well as played back tapes. The quality of our home stereo equipment reflected the priorities of the youth in our youth group. I purchased used equipment from youth who were eager to upgrade.
The world of music and music distribution has changed dramatically from those days. I now own a watch that can remember my playlist and send music to a set of wireless headphones. I don’t use that particular feature, but I use my phone to look up and listen to songs and our computer is our home music system.
Another way of dating myself when it comes to music is that I am old enough to remember that the band Chicago started out with the name Chicago Transit Authority. I noticed for several reasons. One is that the band had a trumpet player, which wasn’t common for rock groups at the time. I played the trumpet, so I noticed the sound. Also, the band was organized in the late sixties, when I was in high school, but after college, we moved to Chicago. The band had shortened its name to Chicago by then, but I learned what the Chicago Transit Authority was all about in the four years that we lived in the city on students’ budgets.
One of the hit songs of the band that continues to be a part of my listening world goes like this in part:
As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what
The time was that was on my watch, yeah … And I said
(I don’t) Does anybody really know what time it is
(Care) Does anybody really care (about time)
If so I can’t imagine why (Oh no, no)
We’ve all got time enough to cry
The season of Advent has got me to thinking about time this year. Maybe it is because I am aware of the vast difference between my perception of time as I approach my 70th birthday and the perception of our grandchildren, the oldest of which is 11. Our grandchildren were at our house yesterday and over dinner we were talking casually about Christmas. Susan will be volunteering in the classrooms of our granddaughters after Christmas. The news that she wouldn’t be coming to the classroom until after Christmas was a disappointment to our kindergartener. She thought that it seemed a long time before her grandma will be there to help the students with reading. Of course Christmas seems very close to us. We have a busy schedule planned with activities at church and then a week’s visit to South Carolina and our daughter’s family there. We will be back right after the new year and will get into the swing of things quickly after the holiday. There is a lot to do in the meantime, and it all seems to us to be happening rather quickly. Not so for the young ones. Christmas seems to be a long way away for them.
The length of three weeks time seems very different to the members of our family.
The ancients understood that there are different qualities of waiting for the passage of time. Biblical Hebrew has four words for waiting. This is a bit of a surprise in a language with a vocabulary that is relatively sparse compared to contemporary English. Normally translators have multiple English words for each word in Hebrew, but when it comes to waiting, they need to distinguish between merely waiting, hopeful waiting, desperate waiting and anxious waiting. Long before the development of modern calendars and dividing the globe into time zones, people were aware that time passes differently depending on a wide variety of factors.
In the song by the band Chicago, the “pretty lady” whose “diamond watch had stopped cold dead” got the same response as the man who asked what time was on the watch. But later in the song, people running everywhere who don’t know where to go provoke a chorus with a different last word. Instead of “time enough to cry,” it is “time enough to die.”
Our mortality is a reality of which we are aware when we take time to think of it. In a sense the important clock for each of us is one that we can’t read or know - the clock of our lifespan ticking down the remaining years, months, weeks, days and minutes until there is no more time for us. The concept of what one might change if one knew the timing of one’s own death has provided us with novels, movies, and lots of plot twists. Most of us don’t know until death comes much closer. And perhaps by the time that occurs, we have joined the band in not caring about time any more.
For the moment, however, I am one of those people who does care about time. I am aware that the time I have in this life is precious. I don’t want to waste it, though I often feel that I am doing just that. I seek out meaningful projects and try not to invest my time in things that don’t have an impact.
In the story of Esther, cousin Mordecai speculates that “perhaps it was for a time such as this” that Esther came to her present position in life. He begs her to intervene to save her people even though there is considerable risk involved. She does and her courage has been celebrated for millennia.
My question is not so much, “Does anybody really know what time it is?” but rather “What is my response to ‘a time such as this?’” I’m unlikely to compose a song, but it is a question worthy of pondering.
The world of music and music distribution has changed dramatically from those days. I now own a watch that can remember my playlist and send music to a set of wireless headphones. I don’t use that particular feature, but I use my phone to look up and listen to songs and our computer is our home music system.
Another way of dating myself when it comes to music is that I am old enough to remember that the band Chicago started out with the name Chicago Transit Authority. I noticed for several reasons. One is that the band had a trumpet player, which wasn’t common for rock groups at the time. I played the trumpet, so I noticed the sound. Also, the band was organized in the late sixties, when I was in high school, but after college, we moved to Chicago. The band had shortened its name to Chicago by then, but I learned what the Chicago Transit Authority was all about in the four years that we lived in the city on students’ budgets.
One of the hit songs of the band that continues to be a part of my listening world goes like this in part:
As I was walking down the street one day
A man came up to me and asked me what
The time was that was on my watch, yeah … And I said
(I don’t) Does anybody really know what time it is
(Care) Does anybody really care (about time)
If so I can’t imagine why (Oh no, no)
We’ve all got time enough to cry
The season of Advent has got me to thinking about time this year. Maybe it is because I am aware of the vast difference between my perception of time as I approach my 70th birthday and the perception of our grandchildren, the oldest of which is 11. Our grandchildren were at our house yesterday and over dinner we were talking casually about Christmas. Susan will be volunteering in the classrooms of our granddaughters after Christmas. The news that she wouldn’t be coming to the classroom until after Christmas was a disappointment to our kindergartener. She thought that it seemed a long time before her grandma will be there to help the students with reading. Of course Christmas seems very close to us. We have a busy schedule planned with activities at church and then a week’s visit to South Carolina and our daughter’s family there. We will be back right after the new year and will get into the swing of things quickly after the holiday. There is a lot to do in the meantime, and it all seems to us to be happening rather quickly. Not so for the young ones. Christmas seems to be a long way away for them.
The length of three weeks time seems very different to the members of our family.
The ancients understood that there are different qualities of waiting for the passage of time. Biblical Hebrew has four words for waiting. This is a bit of a surprise in a language with a vocabulary that is relatively sparse compared to contemporary English. Normally translators have multiple English words for each word in Hebrew, but when it comes to waiting, they need to distinguish between merely waiting, hopeful waiting, desperate waiting and anxious waiting. Long before the development of modern calendars and dividing the globe into time zones, people were aware that time passes differently depending on a wide variety of factors.
In the song by the band Chicago, the “pretty lady” whose “diamond watch had stopped cold dead” got the same response as the man who asked what time was on the watch. But later in the song, people running everywhere who don’t know where to go provoke a chorus with a different last word. Instead of “time enough to cry,” it is “time enough to die.”
Our mortality is a reality of which we are aware when we take time to think of it. In a sense the important clock for each of us is one that we can’t read or know - the clock of our lifespan ticking down the remaining years, months, weeks, days and minutes until there is no more time for us. The concept of what one might change if one knew the timing of one’s own death has provided us with novels, movies, and lots of plot twists. Most of us don’t know until death comes much closer. And perhaps by the time that occurs, we have joined the band in not caring about time any more.
For the moment, however, I am one of those people who does care about time. I am aware that the time I have in this life is precious. I don’t want to waste it, though I often feel that I am doing just that. I seek out meaningful projects and try not to invest my time in things that don’t have an impact.
In the story of Esther, cousin Mordecai speculates that “perhaps it was for a time such as this” that Esther came to her present position in life. He begs her to intervene to save her people even though there is considerable risk involved. She does and her courage has been celebrated for millennia.
My question is not so much, “Does anybody really know what time it is?” but rather “What is my response to ‘a time such as this?’” I’m unlikely to compose a song, but it is a question worthy of pondering.
