Between Going and Staying
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now at bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shae of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
Octavio Paz

Week Six: Jewish and Christian Time

Two Page Essay: Compare and assess these accounts of ‘time’ in Christianity and Judaism.

In reading Raddi Greenberg’s account of the Jewish holidays, I am reminded of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, writer, and professor and Bernie Glassman, a Jewish Zen Master from New York. A deep understanding of the “threefold present,” as identified in class, is reflected in the life and work of both Wiesel and Glassman, men deeply rooted in Jewish culture and tradition. It has been years since I read Man’s Search for Meaning but I remember that essential to Weisel’s survival was his ability to remember life before the concentration camps, to imagine his wife greeting him at the door, for example, and to bring these memories into the present, holding them safely in his thoughts of the future.

I am then reminded of Bernie Glassman’s retreats at Auschwitz, retreats including survivors, children of survivors, children of Nazis, children of German soldiers, and children of refugees. Though the Holocaust, as an event, is of the past, the pain and suffering of the Holocaust is very much present today. Through entering into relationship with this suffering, i.e. acknowledging it and giving it space, these retreats transform and heal this suffering in time. In shifting the very meaning of this suffering now, this healing penetrates all time: past, present and future.

In his chapter “The Holidays as the Jewish Way,” Rabbi Greenberg explains that the rhythm of the Jewish year leads the Jewish people through a reenactment of the Exodus with Passover, the covenant acceptance with Shavuot and a reconstruction of the exodus way with Sukkot.[1] Like the Christian (in the fullest sense of the word) experience of time, while these holidays commemorate the historical past, more importantly, they bring this historical past into the present and summon the future into the present reality.[2] Greenberg writes, “Uniquely, the human being can anticipate the future redemption and bring it closer. Thus, an event that has not yet occurred can have a profound impact on the present, an impact strong enough to overcome even powerful past conditioning”[3] and, I would add, terrifying and violent conditions in our current lives (as we see in the writings and teachings of Elie Wiesel). The Jewish year and its holidays are designed to teach us how to deal with sorrow, to remind us of suffering and death when we become too comfortable in our daily routines, and to nurture us with visions of a perfect world[4] and belief in a final, universal redemption.[5]

While there are many parallels between Christian and Jewish understanding and use of time, with the 8th day (with Christ rising the first day after the Sabbath) a new time evolves; with the resurrection of Christ, time itself is transformed.[6] According to Schmemann, the Church continued to use the Jewish festivals of Passover and Pentecost because these holidays anticipated the experience of time of which the Church was now the manifestation and fulfillment.[7] These holidays represented a period of passage into joy and salvation, into a new ‘eon’ of the Spirit[8] (as they represented passage from exile to freedom in the Old Testament). Therefore, the early celebration of Easter is the fulfillment of time itself. Namely, through Easter, meaning (Joy) is given to time, thus transforming the reality of Christian life in this world (for Christians are no longer waiting for the savior; He has come).

[1] Greenberg 25
[2] Ibid. 27
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid. 33
[5] Ibid. 19
[6] Schmemann 51
[7] Ibid. 56
[8] Ibid. 56-57

"I live my life"

I Live My Life
I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years.
And I still don't know if I am a falcon,
Or a storm, or a great song.

Rainer Maria Rilke / 1899
from Book for the Hours of Prayer
translated by Robert Bly

Reflections on Week One: Historical and Theological Groundwork

. . .What impresses me about this week’s reading is how time and space are used as grounding forces in Christian tradition and practice. As we see in Klein’s description of sacred architecture, places of worship and the surrounding space were designed to cultivate movement inward and closer to God (and here I am reminded of Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle). Similarly, times of prayer carved into daily life, mirroring the sacred times and cycles of the year, are reminders of the beginning of things, helping us to engage the wisdom of those who have lived before.

For example, the Christian Pentecost, held on the same day as the Jewish Pentecost, commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit over the Apostles and the subsequent birth of the Christian church. On this day of celebration and remembrance, the spiritual birth of new Christians (baptism) is also celebrated.[1] Through connecting with and reincorporating traditions of the past into the present, we are more deeply rooted in this time and place. The tradition of Sunday worship is another example of this. While it reminds Christians of past events, it also celebrates their present experience of communion in Christ.[2]

With the support of these temporal and spatial structures, the realities most central to the church—manifestation, resurrection, and the indwelling spirit—are manifest.[3] Prayer cycles and sacred space help to extend prayer into all parts of the practitioner’s life. These practices remind me of how, in the practice of meditation, we pause in our day to focus on the breath. We are always breathing but in drawing our attention to the breath, we breathe more deeply. In pausing to sit on a cushion, we become more aware of ourselves in relation and attentive to the spaces in between. Likewise, the scheduled practice of prayer and the Christian use of space directly impact how we live our lives, helping us to be, most fully, human. Clement of Alexandria writes: “‘Holding festival, then, in our whole life, and persuaded that God is altogether on every side present, we cultivate our fields, praising; we sail the sea, hymning.’”[4]

As the rhythm of Christian prayer and the cycles of worship strengthen the connection between self and God, the sacred spaces of worship help to ground the human self in being. In other words, sacred spaces draw us inward and cultivate our sense of rootedness in the world. They also open our eyes to that which is greater than and beyond human comprehension. Thus reminding us of our partiality, sacred spaces encourage us to live responsibly in this particular time and place.[5] In his essay, Creatures of Place and Time: Reflections on Moving, Gilbert Meilaender reminds us: “to give ourselves to no one and no place in particular is not to be more like God; it is just to fail as a human being.”[6] The Christian use of temporal and spatial structures helps us, as human beings, to understand and to actualize our proper place in creation.

[1] The New Handbook of the Christian Year 21
[2] Bradshaw 77
[3] Handbook 24
[4] Bradshaw 73
[5] Here I draw upon the ideas of Wendell Berry: …No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one’s partiality…” (The Unsettling of America 123).
[6] Meilaender, 18: Meilaender, Gilbert. 1997. “Creatures of Place and Time: Reflections on Moving.” First Things, April: 17-23.