I can honestly say that right now, I don’t know what time zone I’m in. I’m sitting on an airplane, my third this week, some 36000 feet above the earth. When we do touch down, the clock will be 14 hours ahead of what my body thinks it should be.
This adventure has already started with some decent delays. Our Toronto- Vancouver flight kept getting pushed back without explanation, giving us an extra 6 hours at Pearson Airport. We missed our connection in Vancouver and so had a day of rushing to establish new flights and killing time until we could take them, struggling to be pleasant despite our exhaustion as we tried to deal with hotel staff (lovey folks), airline call centers (a test in patience), and finally airport staff (who gave conflicting information). But, we are now on the flight, somewhere over the Pacific. We’ll arrive a full 24 hours late, a little worse for wear, needing to reset our clocks and watches and bodyclocks.
It has been a challenging time; a time of hurry up and wait, a juxtaposition of NOW! and Not Yet. A time of laughter in the midst of challenge, of trust in the midst of uncertainty. A time of required adaptation to changes both expected and not, a time where time itself seems out of sorts.
It’s been a time not unlike the change of liturgical seasons that we celebrate in our church calendars. We’re presently preparing for the start of Lent, a time where we shift rather quickly from the joy and felicity of the Epiphany to a time of somber reflection. The change of seasons is, in the calendar, a change that literally happens overnight. Yet the very act of preparing for Lent – selecting a spiritual discipline to follow, liturgical preparations of ashes and altar hangings and special services, even the act of getting ready for pancake suppers on Shrove Tuesday (I think I’m in Tuesday now!) – these take us a little bit out of the normal timeline. They take us mentally out of Epiphany before the season is done, into a similar reality of now and not yet, of shifting time, of uncertainty as to exactly where we are.
So I sit here, uncertain as to where or when I am. But certain that I am in the right place and the right time. Certain that whatever will happen in the days and weeks to come will be exactly what is meant to happen, whether it fits nicely in a day timer or not.
After all, if I’m truly following the timeless Son of Man, perhaps my learning this journey (both physically and spiritually entering into new realities this Lent) is to simply be present in the here and the now, grateful for what is and not worrying about what will be. Perhaps this Lent will truly be a time of travel and journey, as God transcends my limited human concept of time and space. As Thoreau wrote: “We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it.” (Walden, p 253)
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