AfterWords | The End of Common Time

A short read
by Katherine Carrier

I sat in my late-teen-year-old body in a UGA lecture hall listening to the class Introduction to Music Appreciation. Most of us, probably none of us, were musicians and our very first lesson was that the first component needed for music, before a single vibration is made, is time. This professor was animated and passionate. He held our attention and expanded our minds. He was patient with all of us, the unwashed, the non-musicians. After a full course and ever since, I still appreciate music. Well done, professor!

I particularly enjoyed Sunday’s music at The Parish. I stood encompassed in the good vibrations of our talented musical crew and watched our drummer, Scott, drum all the beats, on his actual birthday. Time has held him, and now holds him in this year, on that little seat there, as he keeps time, as he punctuates time, quietly, loudly. I watched all the musicians move, like one unit, time drawing them forward through the measures, in strums, strikes, voices. Music holds time and time holds us.

Jordan said it was the last Sunday of Common Time on the church calendar. I appreciate people who keep time so well. My task this morning was to sit and calendar. In our Emotionally Healthy Spirituality class that Morgan and Noel masterfully facilitated, I came away inspired to create a Rule of Life, with practices that become habits that eventually create a life lived on purpose. I can live willy-nilly or I can embrace calendaring. This means I score measures of my time with various intended movements, like a composer would, and whether it ends up being like Debussy or Stravinsky, it is scored deliberately, and arranged based on those things I deem important, because, as Annie Dillard says, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Sunday, Noel beautifully explained the Sign of the Cross to us, the tradition, universality, how to make the Sign of the Cross and what it means, the symbolism of each stop of the hand. Head, God the Father. Heart, Jesus the Son. Each side of the chest, Holy Spirit. My mind lingered all of Sunday on each point and path of the Sign of the Cross, this embodied prayer and worship practice.

Our body itself is a big clock. I love to press the knife-edge of my thumbs to my forehead. It soothes me. Somewhere back there in my brain, behind my thumbs, is the pineal gland, shaped like a tiny pinecone. It tells my body to release melatonin based on how much sunlight there is, so I can wake and sleep, following the markers of a day. Lower down in the brain is the pea-sized pituitary that has the chemicals to stimulate growth and maturation, making adults of children.

As I lower my hand from my head, it passes the front of my throat, the voice box, and also the thyroid, a butterfly shaped gland that is in charge of metabolism. This transformation of food into energy enables me to get out and transform my yard into a butterfly sanctuary. The thyroid also tells the heart how much blood to pump and how slowly or quickly, essentially keeping us in time.

My hand then drops to rest at the chest space, where while making the Sign of the Cross, we pause to acknowledge the Son, Jesus, by whose wounds we are healed. And just there behind the breastbone is the thymus, with the job of getting our immune cells created and matured in order to fight infection, for with these cells, we are healed.

The hand moves to either side of the chest to frame out the sides of the cross and mark the Holy Spirit, spiritos, wind, breath. Breaths measure our lives. Breaths frame our lives, start to finish. With every inhale our bodies keep living. The breath animates us, allowing oxygen to pump through our bodies and fuel movement. Each exhale releases cell waste. Each exhale releases tension.

Personally, I finish the Sign of the Cross, the Amen, the “verily, verily,” the verity, by drawing my hand to my solar plexus, there between my navel and my diaphragm, where some traditions say our will resides, like fire in the belly, like a gut-feeling that provokes action. I want my will to be at the foot of the cross, aligned there where fear is transformed into love.

But there at the will, the belly, fear resides, the butterflies in my stomach. The social anxiety. Or that sinking feeling for my children or their children when the world seems uncertain. You see, my own body clock has moved into this brilliantly color-saturated October-like time. I sat just this past Saturday on the edge of a hospital bed as my daughter held her newborn daughter, and I saw time expressed: early-spring, summer, and autumn in the three bodies there. My body orbits around these other bodies as much as they will let me.

And here is a fresh new person to love, my second granddaughter this year. Usually I walk about with the feeling that my body clock will not wind down—how inconceivable that it would! I feel great. My state is living. Of the two states, my body has only ever known this one state. I only reticently embrace that there will be a time beyond my own common time, where most likely, these people I love, the new and newer ones, will exist in that time. And I just have to let them, no matter how uncertain the world. I have to be okay with that. And I press my thumbs to my forehead to be soothed. No sinking because, God!

God, creator of time,
outside of actual time,
receiving this prayer in my time?
Wait! Maybe time past
And present too?
What exactly is time to you?

I will sit with that
and ever wonder
and never know.

The universe the expanse
I press my thumbs to my head
The majesty, mystery, magic
Holds me still in ever wonder
Leaves me waiting, wanting.

My hand drops, passes
my lips. My throat.
My words
Speak! Transformed
Speak fear to love.
Sing! Join voices two, three, join
Songs of joy
Songs of lament
Songs of common time.

My hand covers my chest,
My heart. I pause. I listen.
I call, I cry. Jesus. King
Jesus, you hold together
Everything in all time
You hold me. You hold those
I hold in my heart.
You give me rest.

My hand goes to one lung “Holy”
to the other, “Spirit.”
Breath breathe life through me.
Animate me! Please,
Give my heart wings.

My hands press palm to palm
Fingers to fingers
Awkward wrist angle, but
I press my joined palms to my center
Surrender. Join. Abide.
Amen, God. Amen, Jesus. Amen, Holy Spirit.