the end of time

This post will be a bit behind the times.  I didn't find the time to write all this week.  Hopefully it will be timely enough still to be relevant.

We're pretty attached to our concept of time, no?  Often without even being aware that what we have -- maybe all we have -- is a concept. 

Yet we talk about it as if it were something we have.  All these very common expressions in which we use the word like an object we could both know and possess.
Give me a little time.
I don't have the time.
Take the time to ___.
If it's important, you'll make time for it.
(most annoying, right?) Time is money.
When the time is right..
It's about time.

What do we know, really?

I know that what I call time frequently escapes, evades, or confounds my best efforts to engage it.  I also know it expands, in ways my rational mind can't grasp, to once in a while accomodate things that are truly important.  I even know, as many people do, that it doesn't always move at the same speed.  And that in certain beautiful contexts, it's entirely possible to step out of it altogether.

I accept that, two days ago, something essential in what-we-perceive-as-time shifted.  I haven't studied the subject as much as have many sincere students and seekers.  My respect for the perceptions of ancient peoples doesn't need to be augmented with minute intellectual or esoteric information:  it's sufficient to know that their understandings grew from a living relationship with processes of  earth, sky, season, community.  Giving them astronomically (ha) greater likelihood of deep knowing than we could ever possibly extract from our worldview driven by media, technology and ego.  And control.

One thing I surely don't have time for is the noise of dramatic, reactionary voices ranting about the end of the world.  Gross misinformation, impoverished sources, fear.  Intentional superficiality.  Things this world already has way too much of.

But I have a few theories of my own.  Maybe they're valid, maybe not.  They seem useful, if only that just thinking about them allows me to inhabit my own small...shifts. 

One.  Maybe our unintentional-time's-up.  That is, maybe for reasons which Life holds and we don't, we now have no more time to waste.  In shallow distractions.  In actions that serve an insular "self" with no greater context.  In fear and divisiveness. In necessary words unspoken.  Maybe we just passed an intangible-but-undeniable marker, past which whatever we do seriously matters.  Is seriously needed as part of the whole.  Even more than before.

Two.  In more anxious moments, I imagine this:  maybe it's that we have no more time to lose.  For the earth.  For our own potential collective survival.  For the oceans, the four-and-two-leggeds, the trees, the cycles of precious water.  Maybe all time for talk has passed, and whatever action that we take -- or don't take -- from right now onward directly creates the earth we have to live with.  Or even, that our action or inaction has already created that earth and from this moment we will only continue to see the unavoidable results.

Three. Maybe time as we know it has ended:  as it can be known.  Maybe time is its own now. Time, its own Now.  Perhaps we're no longer at liberty to
make time
save time
take time
invest time
like we do money. Maybe, from the perception that we call "this moment" forward, Time is its own being. To be met on its own terms. To be received, with reverent spaciousness, as a sacred Other, rather than consumed as a commodity. Perceiving in this way would give hope to those of us who already respect time as an entity not entirely controllable or even very often predictable. Those of us already working, for some time, to learn what a magical and even powerful existence it might be to go with the flow. 

I've wasted so much time in this precious life.  And had it wasted for me.  This shift, for me, is simply an intention to do -- or not do -- whatever it takes to change that.  To inhabit what time is yet given to me, or I am given to.  As present, as grateful, as heart-fully as possible.  In that last sense, maybe it will be clear what I mean when I say:  I hope, and pray, that I'm in time.