Ian, our seven year old, is somewhat obsessed with time.\u00a0 The first thing he does\u00a0 every morning – no matter how ![](\"http:\/\/worshiplife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/The-Real-Meaning-of-Time.png\")
early it might be – is come in to our room, grab my cell phone and check the time (and the weather).\u00a0 If we are in the car, or at home there is never too much time that passes without Ian asking for a time check.\u00a0 Time is very important to him, he wants to know the exact time, all the time.<\/p>\n
A big part of why Ian is so focused on the time, is because he is also focused on the schedule or what happens next.\u00a0 He is a planner: he wants to know what is happening, at what time, with who, where and for how long.\u00a0 As much detail as possible would be appreciated – as focused as he is on time, he isn’t in a hurry.<\/p>\n
Without really even thinking about it, I think we assign meaning and value to time on a regular basis: noon is lunch time, 5:00pm is the end of the work day, etc.\u00a0 Everyone’s individual schedule will vary, of course, but we all have lots of times that mean something to us.<\/p>\n
While we don’t often thing about it, the meaning often goes the other way as well, the time – or the memory of that time – can give meaning to us and our lives as well.<\/p>\n
Charles Taylor, in his landmark tome,\u00a0 A Secular Age,\u00a0<\/em>says that – in contrast to every other time in human existence, we are now (since the enlightenment or so) living in what he describes as: ‘A purely secular time – understanding allows us to imagine society \u201c horizontally \u201d , unrelated to any \u201c high points \u201d , where the ordinary sequence of events touches higher time , and therefore without recognizing any privileged persons or agencies \u2014 such as kings or priests \u2014 who stand and mediate at such alleged points . This radical horizontality is precisely what is implied in the direct access society , where each member is \u201c immediate to the whole \u201d (Taylor, 714)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n What Taylor is saying, in part (I think), is that with the secularization of our society, we have lost the so-called ‘high points’ in time, that gave meaning and value and purpose to our existence.\u00a0 These tent poles marked out time – the passing of another year, for instance – but they were tied into something beyond this immanent framework – that brought meaning and purpose to everything else.<\/p>\n In the span of a page and a half, Taylor makes several profound statements about time, that I will share and comment on:<\/p>\n Taylor summarizes his point on our modern, secular world and time here:<\/p>\n In virtually all pre – modern outlooks , the meaning of the repeated cycles of time was found outside of time , or in higher time or eternity . What is peculiar to the modern world is the rise of an outlook where the single reality giving meaning to the repeatable cycles is a narrative of human self – realization , variously understood as the story of Progress , or Reason and Freedom , or Civilization or Decency or Human Rights ; or as the coming to maturity of a nation or culture . The routines of disciplined work over the years , even over lifetimes , the feats of invention , creation , innovation , nation – building , are given a larger meaning through their place in the bigger story …………So deeply has the narrative of human progress become embedded in our world that it would indeed be a frightening day in which all faith in it was lost . Its embedding is attested in much everyday vocabulary , in which some ideas are described as \u2018 progressive \u2019 , others as \u2018 backward \u2019 ; some views are those of today , others are positively \u2018 mediaeval \u2019 ; some thinkers are \u2018 ahead of their time \u2019 , others are still in a previous century , etc .\u00a0(Taylor, 717)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n While we are in the the time of the immanent framework, it is difficult (impossible?) to connect to to anything outside or above that framework for meaning and purpose in life, so our secular world has put forth human progress – the idea that we will get better and be better as the thing that we are all working towards and that which gives our lives value.<\/p>\n As we think about how to tell the Christian story in this place and in this time, I wonder if at least part of our focus shouldn’t be on the fact that God didn’t wait for us to look beyond our ‘horizontal’ realities, past the immanent framework or even beyond ourselves to ‘find’ God.\u00a0 No, instead, I believe we should be focusing on the story of how God loves and cares for us so much that God came down to us – joined our horizontal world, as it were, to offer us the only thing that can bring us true progress: reconciliation to God.<\/p>\n Ian, our seven year old, is somewhat obsessed with time.\u00a0 The first thing he does\u00a0 every morning – no matter how early it might be – is come in to our room, grab my cell phone and check the time (and the weather).\u00a0 If we are in the car, or at home there is never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[186],"class_list":["post-15984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-taylor","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15984"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16016,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984\/revisions\/16016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nThese moments can be very powerful , even dangerously so……..But they seem to answer a deeply felt need in modern society\u00a0(Taylor, 715)<\/em>\u00a0 In the absence of time or moments (and memories of those moments) connected to the higher realm or plane – and thus having supernatural and religious meaning.\u00a0 When we are caught up in one of these moments they can be almost a religious experience: stirring us to action (BLM, Woman’s march, etc); engaging us in lament (9\/11, death of princess Di – as Taylor mentions, etc.); celebration (International sporting events, i.e. Olympics, world cup, & I would argue you could include ‘viral videos’ here)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n![](\"http:\/\/images.addictionblog.org\/cherrycake\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/The-meaning-of-One-Day-At-A-Time-2.png\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"