Sacred Time

Sacred Time…

So this past Sunday was All Saints Sunday.    Usually this day has been a time of remembering those who’ve gone before us – people we knew and loved specifically, but really it’s about remembering the “great cloud of witnesses” – the saints.  And I totally get it.    I did think about this, but what really asserted itself was the notion of “Sacred Time”.   

Time… evidently it’s more than anything a human construct.   Does a fish know water is wet?   We know time is a way we measure and order events from the past to the present to the future.   It’s a way of measuring our life on earth as all this travels through space, even if we’re sitting still.   But there are some things about time that are not what we’ve always just “assumed” to be true – some of these; time isn’t static, it isn’t standard… and it’s not separate from “space”.           

         

The “past” isn’t what we always think it is either.    I’m not talking about “the past” like some think nostalgically of that “Norman Rockwell” era most of us never knew.   I’m talking about something else, something deeper.   Maybe there’s a “Sacred” kind of past.

 Back during my seminary training, I did my Clinical Chaplaincy experience in a continuing-care facility for senior adults.   Our first week + was filled with briefings, exercises, medical checks (TB test, etc.), and the various effects of trying to acclimate ourselves to a new professional environment.   One of those briefings came from a geriatric nurse, who talked with us about “reminiscence”.   She said we often think of this as a synonym for “remembering”.   But she said reminiscence is not just “remembering” the past, but a re-telling of the past as one’s memory is filled with emotion and life as much as images. 

She said these folks would often talk about the past, they’d tell stories.   She said something like, “be careful and listen.   If they tell you stories, they’ll be telling you about their lives... stories that mean a lot to them.   But they won’t be just stories!   They might be letting you in on some part of their histories that doesn’t exist anymore, an experience they had that possibly meant something to them.   Basically they’ll be leaving a treasured piece of themselves with you.”                

I remember hearing a story that was something about the elders of a particular Native American people… they told the younger generations to not share the People’s Sacred Stories with the greater American culture!    But then they re-thought their decision, and told them they could if wanted to since to them (the greater American culture) the stories were just that… stories.   Maybe we’re not used to hearing stories as more than just stories.    Maybe we’re not used to hearing stories as part of a “Sacred Past”.    Time measured in a whole different way, indeed.

Back about 20 years ago, a movie called “The Thirteenth Warrior” came out.  It starred Antonio Banderas as a Muslim Royal from the Middle East back about 1100 years ago who travels north to the “Northmen” country – the Nordics.   Can’t remember why he ends up there, but as it turns out, he’s enlisted into a plan where thirteen warriors (he being the thirteenth) must go to protect and save another Northmen village.     There’s a line in the movie that the other twelve say on various meaningful moments.    Maybe it’s a bit hokie… made for Hollywood maybe… but the line is: 

“Lo there do I see my father, Lo there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers , Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. Lo, they do call me, they bid me take my place among them, in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever”        

I think this phrase was the movie-makers way of trying to help the characters meaningfully connect to the “past”…. their past… their sacred past.   There’s something about “looking back” in that sense.  Maybe recognizing the past in that way somehow gives us “footing” in the present.     

National Geographic might still be working on a study on the human genome –they’ve been doing this study for about 10 years or so, maybe more.   Back in the day, (again not sure if it’s still going on) their website said this was NOT for genealogic research, since it studies human migration patterns going back to 10 thousand years.    If you sent them $100 dollars, they’d evidently send you back a swab to swipe inside your cheek.  From this, they would in time share with you where your ancient ancestors might have lived and where they might have moved to.   This study was a world-side effort, taking cheek swabs from people across the globe.    It studied ancient peoples… our peoples… our ancestors.   And I wonder what it would have been like to be able to say not just, “Early humans used to live in ____X___ place”, but “my ancestors used to live in ___ X___ place” and saying this with DNA evidence.  

This makes “ancient peoples” more personal – now they’re related to us!    Makes you want to ask what they were like, what they did, who they were.   Sort of explains why so many people are interested in genealogy in general.  Maybe there’s a part of us that wants to connect to something older than just us and our own “memories”, older than just our own presence here in this place and time.   Sacred Memory… even if it’s not “our own” memory.

When both my kids were younger – at bed-time, we’d talk a little, and say a prayer.   But sometimes each of them, in their own time, would ask, “Daddy, tell me a story about when you were little.”  Hearing that made me remember I used to do the same thing with my parents.  I heard stories about my parents, and their parents… and sometimes I heard stories that had been handed down through generations.    I didn’t know it at the time, but now I do… hearing these stories was a kind of sacred trust.

But we can also look to the future and the future generations – the second kind of Sacred Time.    There’s a company called (if I remember rightly) GenePeek.  They take the genes of couples who plan to procreate, and run the genetic break-down in a computer program… then take that break down and run a thousand possible combinations… basically a thousand “computer program children”.   This gives the parents an idea of the odds of a kid getting certain characteristics, or the chance they might develop this or that.     

I’ve also heard stories of some Native Peoples here in the US that, when they were faced with a big decision, would sit and discern how that decision might affect their descendants to the 7^th generation.      

There’s something about honoring the past for sure.   There’s something about honoring those who’ve gone before us, even those who we knew in our own past –the people, the experiences.   We honor thee with the telling of stories, with the memories.  There’s something about reaching back through time and space… and there’s something about looking forward – beyond us – to those that will come after us, our children and grandchildren, those we’re going to be connected to. 

This conscious look into the future – into our futures – develops in us a sense of connection to our descendants, it develops in us a sense of responsibility to them.    And this leads us to the third sacred time – The Sacred Present, which may be more sacred.     Here we stand between two times;

The past – the distinct past of our existences, the murky past of “family stories”, the mythic past of the human experiences   and

The future – of our own genetic descendants, of the continuation of the overall human story.     

   But they meet – right here and right now!  With you   in your present!

“So, what’s so sacred about the present?!”   Yeah, I get that – when you’re sitting in traffic on the way to work… when you’re doing laundry… when you’re running errands or chores… I get that.   It’s hard to see the Sacred Present… in the present!   Oh the irony!!       “Where is the Sacred in the Present?!”

And yet, I still can’t help but look behind me and see the “memory” of my ancestors, and look ahead of me and see the “eyes” of my children’s children – whether actual genetic connections or metaphoric connections… it’s still Sacred and just as real!

I still can’t help but look between these two and say, “even though I can’t always sense this whole ‘Sacred’ thing… I have to believe there is something about being in the sacred in-between”.

Pr. C-