Timeless.
When I learn to let go of who I think I am and relinquish all I think I need to be me,
You cannot resist entering my heart, and do, for when I let go of thinking that my life is mine
You finally have room to make it Yours and cannot help but come to fill what is empty,
for you want only my nothingness and to that You give Your allness, and so I shall know
Your heart as mine and mine as Yours.
~ Meister Eckhart
lent 4. From timebound to timeless
I just went back and re-watched one of my favorite movies—”Cast Away” with Tom Hanks. Spoiler Alert: A FedEx exec who preaches that “we live or we die by the clock” crashes into the ocean several days later, washes up on a tiny island to survive there alone for four years… where time takes on a slightly different meaning! So in addition to our Lent chant below, I’m including the clip where Hanks declares the relentless rule of time. Let’s just say that by the end of the movie, his relationship with time has changed dramatically.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that, by the end of Lent, I hope your relationship with time might change at least in a small but meaningful degree.
We have been talking about Lent being a liminal space. You’ve probably heard from me before that the word liminal comes from the Latin limen that means a threshold—a place of transition, an in-between place where you have left one location but not yet landed in another. Jesus’ 40 days in the desert, which Lent invites us to revisit, was an extended threshold between his private life and his public life. Tom Hank’s character entered into a four-year liminal season of pure survival. What kind of liminal space might you be in?
The thing about liminal spaces is that we tend to resist them as uncomfortable and unproductive. We don’t usually get to choose when they begin or how long they last, and so we feel at least some level of powerlessness. This space hearkens back to my second book When God Waits in that these in-between seasons are designed to be our most richly formational seasons of all… if we can lay down our defenses and open our hearts to their shaping influence.
Tom Hank’s character came out of his liminal space a very different person. Even Jesus emerged from his liminal space with a different level of spiritual authority. What changes might be possible in you between now and Easter? What would you want?
“Cast Away” absolutely nails how ravaged our western culture is by the merciless pressure of time… and how that pressure can malform the soul. In his unsought solitude, Hanks returns to the simplicity of shelter, food, and fire and the natural rhythms of season and tide. Liminal space is a timeless space. And by that, I don’t mean wasted or unfocused. Liminal spaces take on their formative power when we stop struggling, when we surrender to their gentle wisdom, and when we start paying attention to the changes needed at the heart level. When we stop trying to use time and allow ourselves to be shaped by it.
Time matters, but the things that matter most are actually timeless. They operate outside the demands of the clock.
growing your soul
Are there any ways in which you would like to renegotiate your relationship with time this Lent?
serving our world
How might you be more available to others if time were your ally rather than your taskmaster?
takeaway
Live gently in the Now.
soak
This week’s chant calls us to patience in the unknowing…