there.
Chronos:
our wristwatch and alarm-clock time.
Kairos:
God’s time, real time. Jesus took John and James and Peter up the mountain in ordinary, daily
chronos;
during the glory of the Transfiguration they were dwelling in
kairos.
—
Chronology, as we know it, began with Creation. Time exists only where there is mass in motion. A certain amount of consternation has been caused among some scientists because our great radio telescopes are giving clues that indicate that this universe did have a beginning, when an unexplained and violent explosion of an incredibly dense ball of matter suddenly burst into the void. As it exploded and expanded, our galaxies and solar systems were formed, and the original explosion continues as the galaxies hurtle outward into unknown space. What our radio telescopes are picking up now are echoes of the sound of that primal explosion, so long ago that it is scarcely expressible numerically.
As the echoes of the beginning linger, so, too, all that we say moves outward in gradually diminishing but never-ending sound waves. One of the more delightful mysteries of sound came when the astronauts on one of our early spaceships heard a program of nostalgic music over their sound system and radioed NASA to thank whoever it was who had sent them the program. From NASA came the rather baffled reply that they had sent the astronauts no such program and knew nothing about it.
This phenomenon triggered a good deal of interest and research: who had beamed the music to the astronauts? What was its source? All the radio and TV programs all over the country at that day and hour were checked out, and none of them was responsible for the music the astronauts had so enjoyed. Further research. Could they all have imagined hearing a nonexistent program of old popular songs? Was it a kind of mass hallucination? It seemed highly unlikely. Research finally revealed that that particular program had been broadcast in the 1930s.
How do you explain it? You don’t. Nor can you explain it away. It happened. And I give it the same kind of awed faith that I do the Annunciation or the Ascension: there is much that we cannot understand, but our lack of comprehension neither negates nor eliminates it.
—
We simply do not understand time. We know that a moving mass is necessary for the existence of time as we define it and that time had a beginning and will have an end. We know that mass and energy are interchangeable and that pure energy is freed from the restrictions of time. But even
chronos
varies from time zone to time zone. When I flew to Cyprus, I had to make a seven-hour adjustment. Even within the United States I have had cause to tell someone who phones me at midnight, “Hey, I am not in California, and it is not nine o’clock here.”
In my grandfather’s lifetime there was no standardization of time such as we’re accustomed to today. Every locality set its own time, according to its own convenience; one village might be two or three hours different from another just a few miles away, and there was outrage at the violation of freedom when the time zones were made obligatory. I have to admit that a certain amount of consistency is practical and helpful. However, no matter how we systematize it, chronological time does not work out evenly in the long run. We base it on the movement of the earth as it turns on its axis and around the sun, and on the movement of the stars across the sky—but every two thousand years or so the astronomers all have to adjust their timepieces a few seconds.
In
chronos
we are restricted to this unevenness; in
chronos
we live most of our lives and watch our bodies growing older, our skin losing its elasticity, our energies their powers of duration. For most of us a watch is accurate enough so that we know when to get up, to go to work, to go to church, to meet a friend. But even though we now have a moderately consistent chronology according to our clocks, there is
Chronos:
our wristwatch and alarm-clock time.
Kairos:
God’s time, real time. Jesus took John and James and Peter up the mountain in ordinary, daily
chronos;
during the glory of the Transfiguration they were dwelling in
kairos.
—
Chronology, as we know it, began with Creation. Time exists only where there is mass in motion. A certain amount of consternation has been caused among some scientists because our great radio telescopes are giving clues that indicate that this universe did have a beginning, when an unexplained and violent explosion of an incredibly dense ball of matter suddenly burst into the void. As it exploded and expanded, our galaxies and solar systems were formed, and the original explosion continues as the galaxies hurtle outward into unknown space. What our radio telescopes are picking up now are echoes of the sound of that primal explosion, so long ago that it is scarcely expressible numerically.
As the echoes of the beginning linger, so, too, all that we say moves outward in gradually diminishing but never-ending sound waves. One of the more delightful mysteries of sound came when the astronauts on one of our early spaceships heard a program of nostalgic music over their sound system and radioed NASA to thank whoever it was who had sent them the program. From NASA came the rather baffled reply that they had sent the astronauts no such program and knew nothing about it.
This phenomenon triggered a good deal of interest and research: who had beamed the music to the astronauts? What was its source? All the radio and TV programs all over the country at that day and hour were checked out, and none of them was responsible for the music the astronauts had so enjoyed. Further research. Could they all have imagined hearing a nonexistent program of old popular songs? Was it a kind of mass hallucination? It seemed highly unlikely. Research finally revealed that that particular program had been broadcast in the 1930s.
How do you explain it? You don’t. Nor can you explain it away. It happened. And I give it the same kind of awed faith that I do the Annunciation or the Ascension: there is much that we cannot understand, but our lack of comprehension neither negates nor eliminates it.
—
We simply do not understand time. We know that a moving mass is necessary for the existence of time as we define it and that time had a beginning and will have an end. We know that mass and energy are interchangeable and that pure energy is freed from the restrictions of time. But even
chronos
varies from time zone to time zone. When I flew to Cyprus, I had to make a seven-hour adjustment. Even within the United States I have had cause to tell someone who phones me at midnight, “Hey, I am not in California, and it is not nine o’clock here.”
In my grandfather’s lifetime there was no standardization of time such as we’re accustomed to today. Every locality set its own time, according to its own convenience; one village might be two or three hours different from another just a few miles away, and there was outrage at the violation of freedom when the time zones were made obligatory. I have to admit that a certain amount of consistency is practical and helpful. However, no matter how we systematize it, chronological time does not work out evenly in the long run. We base it on the movement of the earth as it turns on its axis and around the sun, and on the movement of the stars across the sky—but every two thousand years or so the astronomers all have to adjust their timepieces a few seconds.
In
chronos
we are restricted to this unevenness; in
chronos
we live most of our lives and watch our bodies growing older, our skin losing its elasticity, our energies their powers of duration. For most of us a watch is accurate enough so that we know when to get up, to go to work, to go to church, to meet a friend. But even though we now have a moderately consistent chronology according to our clocks, there is
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