Kairos

I feel embattled, as I have this entire day. I want this entry to be insightful while I simultaneously want it to be over. I know that it should be written but I wish I were writing something else. It warrants being written yet I will only be able to touch upon its subject matter. I want this entry to be momentous yet it is about the very moment that it desires to be...

The word 'Kairos' has its origins in Greek. Chronos is the form of time with which we are all so familiar. As my spiritual director said to me Thursday, that kind of time is a "commodity" that we "parcel". I confessed to him that time has become my idol, though I hadn't any clue how that came to be. We agreed to blame society, he and I. Then we started talking about Kairos—the fullness of time. That word has sat on the back of my tongue ever since. I find it an entertaining irony that my entry titled "kairos" seems to be coming at what would seem an inopportune moment—days after this discussion with Gerry.

It will not surprise you that I have chased Chronos. It is the 'American' condition. For too long I have envied those who are much better at that chase than I am: organized, driven, capable of intuiting just how to do something most efficiently. Those visions of perfect chronos management appealed to the perfectionism that had gone to seed in my mind since early school days—quantifiable bench-marks for success. But I failed utterly. I am twenty-four years old with no clear career track, no wife, and an absent-minded nature. If chronos were puss, I am covered with open sores. It oozes out of my skin and I lose it forever.

This concept of Kairos came as a subtle relief to me—and an affirmation of another tendency in myself. Thursday, I left work an hour before my session with Gerry so that I would not be late. Half-way to my destination, I realized how early I was going to be. I thought about time and how it had become my idol. I wondered what I would do, nonetheless, during those extra fifteen minutes. The moment itself was momentous. I climbed from my car and sat on an embankment over-looking a wetland and began to say an open-eyed prayer. I found Kairos—the sense that I was in the right moment doing just as I needed to be doing.

My addiction to chronos continues, though. You readers are spared my long internal monologue about how I spent my time today because it is almost midnight and I know that I cannot fully tackle this. Instead, I want to tease at the beginning of these thoughts—

The image of a boulder in a stream. Gerry said "why don't you plug that image into your mind a few times this week; see what happens." –not knowing that a day will not pass for at least a week without my thinking about that boulder. Upstream is the entirety of my past, down-stream is a bend in the river that I cannot see past. There, on the down-stream side of that boulder RIGHT before the future is a back-eddy where I can put the nose of my kayak and cling to that boulder indefinitely.

The Kairos I found while I researched on the internet is about seizing a moment but the Kairos Gerry was speaking to me about is like that boulder in the stream. He keeps stressing "being" as opposed to "doing." So, perhaps I was right to drink whiskey and watch "Rush Hour II" on Thursday night, rather than seize the moment (perhaps not) because this thought carries on and to fold-it-up neatly in a journal entry would not bring it to life as I had hoped.

"Whenever something happens or you have a thought, John, I notice that you feel compelled to do something with it. That's not necessarily bad but... do you think it is okay to just take the experience in and then let it go? There is worth in that, too..."

As I often say in my hand-written journal (when I get to it) 'many thoughts'. Kairos is just one dimension of 'Waiting'. My mind is splitting in eight different directions again, trying to do something with all of my complex thoughts and emotions.

When Gerry mentioned the boulder, he was not trying to describe Kairos. He was trying to get me to stop being completely absorbed with either my thoughts or emotions, running back and forth between them. He is trying to get me to dwell inside my soul.

I am afraid I have left more questions instead of answers. As I said, I think I would rather be writing something else—so when will that occur? Perhaps that time is nearing.

*unsatisfied*