To Be Timeless

I have felt recently the inconvenient and undesired constructs of time, or more so, the frustrating constraints and controls of time. The feeling that my time is not my own, that the activities and responsibilities of each day are chosen for me, that I am running from one thing to the next and back again without even catching my breath. I do mean the running part quite literally, just ask my husband or my mom.

The time it takes to get ready for work, to drive to work, to work, to drive home, to have an afternoon pick-me-up coffee, to make dinner, to clean the kitchen, or not, and run off to our evening plans feels all-time-consuming. I say it feels outside of my control, but there is likely a good bit of truth that much of this business is self-inflicted. Nevertheless, I have acutely felt the existence of time, and it does not help that everything in life is timed and structured by time and schedules. I am constantly checking my watch or the nearest digital numbers to tell me how much time I have lost and how little I have left. The pressures of time are a sure recipe for internal angst. C. S. Lewis writes in a letter to his friend Sheldon Vanauken, "Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it--how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.”

I often feel the internal angst towards the pressures of time most often on vacation, no less. A time when I should really not feel in submission to time at all. But it is while I am on vacation that I feel like I need to "get the most out of time." I am constantly aware of the time passing, that my vacation is rapidly coming to an end, that the moments I want so badly to enjoy longer are only a mere moment in time. As a result, I sometimes feel like a third-party individual watching the moment pass instead of living in the moment itself. Almost like an out-of-body experience yet simultaneously being very consciously aware of each breath and each step. I feel I must "maximize" my time, not waste a second of it, and not use it in a way I'll regret. Which leads to fearing that I will make the wrong decision on whether we go to the pool or the beach that day, or eat this food or that food, or bike or walk, etc. I will feel guilty if I sleep in because I should have got up early and had more day to enjoy. And I will feel guilty if I get up early and don't sleep in, because vacation is the only opportunity I have to sleep in. You see the frustration?

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At Christmas a friend gave me the book A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. It was the perfect gift, even though she did not know I would receive it (it was part of a gift exchange), because the book had been on my "Next to Read" list for quite awhile. So I eagerly delved into it the next time I was in Florida because that seems to be the only place where all my books now get read. As Vanauken describes his and Davy's love story, their meeting, their establishing of the 'Shining Barrier' to protect their love, the values they uphold, their love of beauty and of each other. . . none can miss the human depth in his writing. Near the beginning of their relationship, Vanauken and Davy contemplate the - contradictory? - experience of time within eternity.

"Sitting before the fire, we had spoken of 'moments made eternity', meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time--moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus-the bell about to ring, the holiday about to end, the going down from Oxford foreseen...Life itself is pressured by death, the final terminus. Socrates refused to delay his own death for a few more hours: perhaps he knew that those few hours under the pressure of time would be worth little....Awareness of duration, of terminus, spoils Now.” (Sheldon Vanuaken, A Severe Mercy)

Thus, Vanauken and Davy committed themselves to the pursuit of the timeful life. A free life. A life without the pressures of time. A life full of 'moments made eternity.' Out of this pursuit the Grey Goose was born, their very own ship that would carry them out to sea "to be free, free to be, free from schedules." This to them was the good life, the timeful life. One night while nestled in a cove on Grey Goose, the wind and the waves and the stars and the scent and weight of the air and the phosphorous all combined to create a moment in which they knew, really knew, they were living a timeless moment.

“We were together, we were close, we were overwhelmed by a great beauty. . . we remained so in timeless loveliness - was it hours? We never knew. . . the moment was utterly timeless: we didn't know that time existed; and it contained, therefore, some foretaste, it may be, of eternity. At last. . . next day we did not know at all whether that timeless moment - that moment made eternity - had been hours long or minutes long. But the question was, of course, of no importance. What is important, perhaps, is that the moment was a culmination of all we had ever dreamt: not just Grey Goose, not just the good life - the timeful life without the pressure of time - but also the green tree of pagan love flourishing within the Shining Barrier. Still in love, still outward bound.” (Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy)

I wondered, have I ever experienced a timeful moment such as this? My wedding day comes to mind. I had heard other couples say that their wedding day was such a blur, it went by so fast, they don't remember the little details, or what the food tasted like, or what people said to them. Hearing those comments made me know I did not want that for our wedding day. Would not let that happen. And I can honestly say that our wedding day really was a timeful moment, a timeless moment, a moment made eternity. A foretaste of eternity as it were, surrounded by those dearest to us in all the world, the ones we love most, who love us, hand-in-hand together, the establishment of our love as long as we both shall live. I remember distinctly when our cake came out, lit with the twinkling glow of sparklers, the happy murmur of guests conversing and laughing around us, my playlist playing softly in the background, the diamond chandeliers above us with the string lights lighting the crowd in an amber glow. Sitting at the head table next to my husband, I remember looking out over the tent to all our guests, breathing slowly, soaking in the magic. Everything I had imagined our wedding day to be came to life in that moment.

I have had glimpses of 'moments made eternity' before and since that day, to be sure. Ricocheting on the waves of the Pacific Ocean in our family boat with my dad at the helm, gazing towards the Appalachian Mountains listening to the chatter of the birds, sitting on a Hawaiian beach whilst covered in sand and happily enjoying an ice cream bar, snuggled in my mother's arms as a child, Saturday morning as a child playing Monopoly with my big brother, swimming while the sun sets over the horizon or watching "Ramona and Beezus" with my best friends, an evening walk with my husband. . . these were the blissful unawarenesses of time.

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We'll always be infinite. I mean infinite not in the same sense that God is infinite, to be clear. Infinite in the sense of "infinity"; that the human soul is eternal. Not infinite like God is infinite, because God's infiniteness means that He is completely unbounded from the limits and constraints of time and space. He exists outside of space as Spirit, and He exists outside of time as the Creator of time, the One who has existed since eternity past. He literally inhabits eternity, that is, He dwells in eternity. To the human mind, bound by time, we could understand this to mean that God dwells in every moment of time all the time. "A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past" (Ps 90:4). "With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Pet. 3:8). He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). He is unchanging. 

"Thus says the LORD, "Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? "For My hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being," declares the LORD." (Isa. 66:1-2)

God's dwelling place is eternity itself, not a particular place that exists in time, because He is beyond time and space. He is everywhere at all times (omnipresent), He is in our midst. "I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit" (Isa. 57:15).

If I think too long and hard on eternity in heaven, on living forever and ever with no end, I start to get pretty uncomfortable. I feel a literal pain in my chest. The idea of living perpetually forever wildly scares me. I push against it because it is utterly unknown to me, incomprehensible, unimaginable. 

But is that what eternity in heaven will really feel like? The perpetual passing of time unendingly, stretching on and on forever? For the first time in my life, I don’t think so. Eternity in heaven will not be infinite time, but timelessness. There will be no time. Yesterday will be as today, and today as tomorrow. We shall live in timeless bliss. Each moment will be time full, in the sense that there will be nothing lacking, there will be joyful satisfaction and complete fulfillment, all our longings coming to rest in the presence of the One we always longed for, were made for, without the angst of time. Our hearts will finally be free, released from the bondage of time, and freed to live each moment as its own. “Timeful moments of infinite duration" (Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy). And that to me really does sound like heaven, to be with Christ, infinitely, blissfully ignorant of time, because there is no time, and yet there will be all the time in the world.