Redeeming Time

Note: Twelve years worth of unrecoverable sand have dribbled into the bottom of my personal hour-glass since I wrote this piece.

“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.”[1]

It was through these words, shown me in a Methodist parsonage on the Kansas prairie shortly after the turn of the millennium by a dear friend and fellow Protestant pastor, that I was first introduced to Thomas Merton. I will ever be thankful for that introduction. The words that I read, sitting there on the floor in the middle of the manse living room, although unknown to me at that moment in time, would, not too long after, become part of a long, painful and needed transformational process in my life. It is a process that is still, and ever will be, ongoing although, at this point in time, it doesn’t appear to be quite as dramatic on the surface of life as it was initially.

We only have so much time and none of us know how much of it we have before our own personal measure of it is spent. It is a truth that none can honestly deny. Time, as we know it, as it is measured to us as individuals, always runs out. The sad reality about this truth is that it is too easy to waste the time we have by spending it on things that simply do not matter, simply do not have any eternal value, or provide anything that prepares us for the eventual day when our physical clock will stop and our personal measure of time will cease.

Time is the most precious commodity that we have and in it we discover the imperative to live carefully, walk circumspectly, redeeming what time we do have.[2] Our own personal interior environment depends upon the efforts we invest in harnessing and structuring the time that we have. These efforts will have a determining effect both interiorly in the world that is our own life and exteriorly in the world that surrounds us.[3]

The use of time as a means to acknowledge God’s creative and redemptive activity does not, at least for most people in our modern age, have much appeal. This hasn’t always been the case, and is still not the case in some instances, if not in actual practice at least in practical theory. Redeeming time through the vehicle of prayer is a legacy given to us by the Church, something handed down to us by our spiritual ancestors from the past.

*One day … Seven Canonical Hours of Prayer.

*Days of the week … Fruitful prayers, particularly those of the Rosary, to pray with their appointed mysteries to contemplate.

*Months of the year … Themed prayers focused on major mysteries of Church teaching.

*Liturgical Seasons … The fertile seed bed that supports a holistic approach to spiritual life.

We are not left without witnesses and examples that direct and lead us so that in each moment of each day we are prepared to receive some seed, some germ of spiritual vitality, falling upon the soil of the soul. Will we ever pray as faithfully and fruitfully as possible? No. Will we ever become masters of time? Probably not. We can, however, endeavor to live more mindfully, more consciously of the time that we are measured and use time, even minute moments of it, in a way that allows freedom, spontaneity, and love opportunity and a place to grow and flourish.

[Redeeming Time is an excerpt from an unpublished booklet entitled A GARLAND OF ROSES that I wrote in 2008.]

© David A. Kralik

[1] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 14 [2] Ephesians 5:15 [3] Colossians 4:5