Therapeutic Time

On a long flight, and prompted by a friend, Harley Stanton found the time to
reflect on the purpose of the Sabbath, and why everyone needs its rest.

Time, centuries, millennium, eternity! They’re some of the most quoted words of the ages. Solomon said, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 2, (NRSV). We say, “Time is of the essence,” and “Time waits for no-one.” There is also a time to reflect and a time to recharge.

We try to divide it, but time cannot be sliced. We seek to understand eternity by our understanding of time, but eternity has no beginning and no end, and our attempts to place slices of time into eternity are akin to placing a grain of salt in the ocean. Yet life is made up of time, and time is the essence of eternity.

For the past four years, I’ve lived in Manila in the Philippines. I looked across the slums and apartments of Metro Manila, where both poverty and priceless treasures hold hands. The sirens of fire engines would roar past in their attempt to quell another fire. Soupy air would scud across the sky as tropical storms dropped torrents and doors and windows rattled their threats of destruction. Birds dived and turned as if surfing a giant invisible wave.

For many in such a situation life is a search for survival. Life becomes an expedient act of the moment, the Nike philosophy of “Just do it!” What we do in time impacts eternity.

Even the longest lives on earth are brief. Several years ago, I travelled to Nagano to speak for a symposium that was to influence the outcomes for the 1998 Winter Olympics. My companion was a researcher in Japan, and he indicated that in Japan there were more than 3000 people over 100 years of age. (Since then, it has expanded to around 10,000.) Because of low infant mortality, an abundant nutrient supply, good genes and an excellent health system, the Japanese are the longest living on earth. As we travelled the country, we reflected on the ageing of people and discussed such issues as anti-oxidants and other likely causes of ageing.*
He also outlined his four-faceted view of time:

1. Chronological time. Greenwich, in London, provides us with the line that sets our global computation. Adjusted to our local setting, our watches, computers, mobile phones, radio and television all keep this ticking in front of us. Digital time keeps satellites in space.

In a way this is mechanical time. To meet our daily needs, we have divided the time of our lives into segments, as though it is something that functions as a machine.

I am kept abundantly aware of this. My wife has taken an overly strong interest in timepieces, and clocks tick around our house day and night. Grandfather, grandmother, digital and domestic, chiming and ticking all enabling us to know “what’s the time?”

2. Physiological time. Some people age more quickly and there are cases of premature ageing, where people age either slower or faster than is considered normal. Obviously smoking causes premature wrinkling and ageing; exposure to ultraviolet light and radiation cause their own forms. There are rare forms of disease that cause progeria, a rapid ageing even in the young.

The learned boy of Lübeck lived only four-and-a-half years, but in that time learned a dozen languages, read and wrote music scores and accomplished an amazing amount. It might truly be said of him that it was more his “donation” than his “duration” that left his mark.

Poet and literary scholar James Macauley had to confront the passage of time in his own life when told that he had colon cancer. After considering his options, he decided to proceed with an operation to remove a significant section of his colon. During the period of life remaining he wrote some of his most poignant poems, which were published in his work Time Given, a fitting description of the extension to his life. When asked about his operation for cancer, he replied, “Better a semicolon than a full stop.”

3. Psychological time. This might be called “dream time.” To indigenous Australians, this is a most important form of time—a time to review your place in the community, the land and the earth. In our lives of haste, the importance of taking time-out becomes increasingly relevant. Forever on the rush, there are times in life when we need to “take time” away from our busy schedule we deem so important. In our world we need times to watch the puffy clouds trundling across the azure sky, to stand in awe of the restless waves, to sit on a park bench and in a relaxed mode watch the passers-by.

Sometimes, when you’re in the presence of an engaging person or doing something that you greatly enjoy, the moments just slip away and we often reflect: “I didn’t realise the time. It’s passed so quickly.”

Psychological time involves the thought of mind and our attitude to our immediate environment. Sometimes it is necessary to disengage our own lives from the world and become transcendent in thought and ready for benevolent action. I consider this to be God’s method of coping.

4. Religious time. It could be called God’s time or no time—it’s when you think of eternity. Time and eternity stand in tension. The time of our lives is in the hands of God’s eternity. God’s time is a time to understand our own person, the place we have in God’s scheme of things.

Arthur Stace of Sydney was remarkable. In the years of poverty that people were facing as a result of the Depression, meals were provided in a church hall on Broadway, in Sydney’s centre. On one particular occasion—about 300 men were present, mostly men depressed by life and circumstance—while on the stage sat six people looking clean and neatly dressed, with an air of respectability. “Who are they?” Stace asked the man next to him, a well-known criminal.

ETERITY: a Tribute to Arthur Stace 1884-1967
Paintings by David Lever

“I’d reckon they’d be Christians,” he replied.

“Well, look at them, and look at us,” Stace responded. “I’m going to have a go at what they’ve got,” and he slipped down on his knees and began to pray.

Following this experience he determined to break from his addiction to alcohol. He soon found a job working for £3 a week at Maroubra. Some months later, he heard a Baptist preacher in the street say, “I wish I could shout ‘Eternity!’ through the streets of Sydney.”

Shortly after that Stace experienced a powerful urge to write the word Eternity, so with a piece of chalk he wrote it on a footpath. This he continued to do for decades; his script became recognised throughout Sydney. Using chalk, he wrote the word on Sydney footpaths more than half a million times. It was the inspiration for the millennium fireworks display on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

A quiet, self-effacing man, Stace was confronted by the nature of the word that questions the destiny of every person, and in so doing confronted the ultimate question for millions.

God places before us a slice in time, that we might begin to understand eternity. We need time to reflect, to unwind from the 25-hour day (for those who work through their lunch hour!), the eight-day week and cities that never close.

God’s therapeutic time is called the Sabbath. God intended that it enable us to stop, step back and reflect on who we are in the greater scheme of things. It was intended to recharge our batteries, to provide perspective on both time and eternity. It truly is therapeutic time.

Sometimes we make a burden of what was intended as therapy. Sometimes we neglect to make God’s time the therapy that it was intended to be.

* My doctor friend indicated that the longest living prefecture in Japan was an area
that grows wasabe or spicy horseradish, a very rich source of anti-oxidants.