Informed by these podcasts, my thoughts have been circling the concept of time. I want to capture some of this language while it is fresh for me...
The Greeks spoke of chronos and kairos. Chronos is ordinary time, calendar and clock time, measured and organizing, progressive and chronic. It is the time of our 2pm self. Kairos is extraordinary time, moments of disruption and inroading that can last an instant or centuries, liminal and acute, timeless and mystical. It is the time of our 2am self.
The Greeks also spoke of apocalypse by which they meant uncovering, veil lifting, revealing, the bright clarity born of approximate endings. Apocalyptic time is thus a form of kairos time-- when there is a collective or personal experience of before/after. A pivot. An opportune time for rash decisions and plot twists.
Time is fundamentally transformation and we cannot grow or change without feeling our own breaking. Tragic time. No creation without destruction. So we are born anew in times of vulnerability and vulnerable in times of rebirth-- when we have a keen and newly awakened sense of our own fragility.
And yet, as any Brené Brown fan knows, vulnerability is the gateway to love. Thus our breaking open is a great softening. A surrender to universal and specific, mundane love.
Mortality entwined with love. Both core to the human condition. A condition that comes with the capacity to go in and out of our bodies. Our leavings, a grace granted by the push of suffering. Our returns, a grace granted by the pull of connection.
No self composed.
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