I used to think time was a human construct we invented to keep ships from falling off the planet, or to keep trains running on schedule. It turns out that time actually began almost 14 billion years ago with what they call the Big Bang, or the Singularity, or Creation, and it continues, as far as we know, to move in one direction. I used to believe that humans were creatures bound by time, each given 80 or so years before we have to return our atoms to the universe.
Then I thought, “no, we are creatures bound by space.” We live on one spec in one of a million galaxies, tied to a fragile home that has the right balance of the right conditions to sustain life. And as I went back and forth trying to understand which dimension governed human existence, I learned from the astrophysicists that this thing called gravity connects time and space together and that’s when I had to say, “I’ll take your word for it.”
Here’s the thing… we’re all connected; planets, trees, butterflies, bears, human beings.
Now, at the other end of this this discussion is Quantum Mechanics, where they study subatomic particles and their relationship to each other. This guy named Schrodinger had a cat that was both alive and dead at the same time, as long as it was in a box where no one could see it. The story illustrates how at the quantum level, matter could exist in multiple states only until we observe and measure it. This explains why light behaves as a wave when we measure electromagnetic energy, and it behaves like particles, when we try to count photons. But this is where my brain starts to grow hair… The study of quantum entanglement says that particles like photons don’t behave as individuals. They are connected to others and the behavior of one correlates to the behavior of another… and get this… regardless of location… IN THE UNIVERSE! Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance”.
Here’s how it all boils down for me. In that moment of singularity, or creation, or the big bang, all the matter and energy and time that exists in the universe was created. So we’re all made of the same stuff; planets, trees, butterflies, bears, human beings. And here’s the thing… we’re all connected; planets, trees, butterflies, bears, human beings.
There is a reason God limits our days… to make each one precious
Mitch Albom from The Time Keeper
Mitch Albom tells the story of the man who discovered how to measure time and the terrible price he paid for the knowledge. Humans have not conquered time, but we sure have figured out how to optimize it for our benefit. The ability to measure time precisely, down to the nanosecond, is what makes GPS, computers, satellites, energy production and pretty much every other aspect of human existence, all possible. And it’s all good. But time is precious and humans have this thing about us that we take precious things and put a value on them; gold, diamonds, life, love, and time. So when a thing becomes precious, we must protect it, and we must get more of it and protect that and we need more of one precious thing to trade for another precious thing. Precious things like time can be bought and sold.
And time is precious, and time is limited and we must make more of it but we can’t so we must optimize what we have, which means we make decisions and fill our days with noise and stuff and social media, and political opinions, and rants about whose rights are more important. And we schedule the lives of our children so that their days are filled with sports, and guided learning activities, and school, organized play time… and we’ve forgotten how to do what the bear and the hawk, and the trees and our indigenous brothers and sisters have known from the beginning… how to be still…. how to stop time.
We were created to live in a garden and it’s there we are at home
Wendell Boertje
We are all busy people. We were raised to be that way and we’ll raise our children to be the same. Our days are filled with information, more than we can process and way more than we need. We will put a value on the precious, including those things that make us uniquely human, like love and joy and happiness and meaning and we will try to multiply and keep those things for ourselves. And we fail. Because all these things are gifts in the first place and we can’t keep them. We have to give them all back. But there is a place one can can go to get back the perspective left behind when we started measuring time. Back to the place we came from, back to the place we are connected to, back to the place that is home.
When I enter the wilderness, I leave behind the boxes we build to keep us away from the garden and each other. There is no noise of engines and information. There is only stillness and communion and presence. And I sit and I listen to all the wondrous things I cannot hear when I am in civilization; those things that connect me to the planet, to bears and trees and other humans. There I am at home. There I am… Human. And that is the place where time stops.
wildsabbath.com 