Time and Life May 21, 2010

As we age it turns out, Mom was right! Time does seem to go faster the older you get. We enjoy several clocks at our home that ring and play music and one even has a cuckoo bird! Yet my newest favorite clock is this yellow and white one designed by Harry Allen for Real Simple magazine. It was featured on the cover of the April edition. What an eloquent expression of the gift of this moment! The minute before is past and the minute to come is future. All we have is right now.

Before that my favorite was the one we learned about when we toured Spring Grove Cemetery one early spring morning.
There are generally two terms used in describing time. Chronos is the time of physics and kairos is an ordered but unmeasured kind of time outside space-time. The simplest forms are ‘physical time’ for chronos and ‘metaphysical time’ for kairos. According to our Spring Grove Cemetery tour guide, this clock never had any hands, “Because time has no meaning in a cemetery.” Eventually we are all guaranteed to move into this sort of kairos timelessness, should the Lord tarry.
And, of course, I have to mention Salvador Dali's "melting clocks" in his painting entitled The Persistence of Memory, 1931. For those who are unfamiliar with him, he was a famous Spanish Painter of the Surrealist school. This link should show you the painting.
http://tothewire.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/the_persistence_of_memory_1931_salvador_dali.jpg?w=300
We briefly visited the gift shop of his museum in Florida. I purchased the key chain for Bob of the "melting clock." You see, no matter how old we get time our age is not nearly so important as our love and relationships. So the years march on, the skin begins to sag, but our love will go on forever. Consider yourself loved if you have read this through. And remember, time is just the tick of a minute hand between past and future!