The other day I was searching for something online and the name of the town I lived in came up in a banner ad.  My home town was basically a gas station and a tree. You could get gas and climb the tree, but that was all the excitement there was in Fosterdale, NY.  So, when I saw that ad, I wondered what had happened in my hometown? Did the gas station catch fire?  Did someone chop down the tree?  As it turns out, the ad was for some genealogical research company and it took me to the cemetery that my town had tucked away.  Someone with nothing else to do had created a web page for the cemetery, listing all of the “residents.” buried there. I discovered that I could use the data base without having to provide a credit card number, so I decided to browse.  I remembered the names of the people in my town (all sixteen of them.)  There was the big kid who was three years older than me who terrorized me on the school bus when I was in third grade.  He died at the age of 56.  I wondered if he ever grew out of his hostile proclivities towards eight-year-olds? His father was the closest thing to a far-right extremist you could find in 1958.  He died as well (else he’d be 108.)  My kindergarten teacher passed away fifty years ago or so, and that made me sad.  She was a nice lady. There was a listing for a kid I hung out with briefly.  He was a wannabe redneck and my mother didn’t like him because he taught me how to cuss and introduced me to racial stereotypes.  He and I weren’t really friends, though we were the same age.  He apparently died when he was only 25.  I entered a few more names, like my classmate who passed away thirty years ago during an asthma attack because the ambulance could not reach her in time (there was a blizzard.)  The others that I remembered must have moved away or were buried elsewhere because they did not appear in the database.

So, I switched to the cemetery of the town that was the site of the school I attended. My graduating class with 31 students was almost twice the population of my hometown.  When you are five years old, that difference can be absolutely breathtaking! Technically though, only 30 in my class graduated because an old friend of mine had been killed in a car accident two nights before commencement. I decided to search by year of birth instead of entering names so I entered my birth year (which–ahem–I need not mention in this post.)  A name popped up.  This was a popular boy I knew.  His dad sold stocks and insurance in the town my school was in.  This lad was clean-cut, smart, and was the kind of kid you could talk to. Mothers might stand in line to introduce him to their daughter.  He, also, died at 25.  I fantasied in my mind that he went to ROTC in college, graduated summa cum, got a commission in the Army and was probably sent to Vietnam. He was the sort kid who would do his duty after all.  But, then, may he drowned in Fort Lauderdale on Spring Break or got hit by a drunk motorist? Who really knows?  As a postscript, I Googled his obituary which said he had “died suddenly at his home.” One more example.  There was a boy in my crew. We were sort of like a “party of five” but all boys.  On weekends, we’d climb a ladder to camp out in one kid’s loft over his dad’s garage.  We were all 14-17 years of age, but we knew a place that would sell us beer.  So, we’d pool our money and we’d get a few six packs, and start drinking and talking about girls, trucks and sports (not necessarily in that order) and by 11:00 p.m. we’d be giggling, performing amazing feats of strength and falling over things and down the access ladder to the loft.  It was like a John Mellencamp ditty.  One kid in our crew could never join us, however.  His mom who seemed overly-protective of him would always say he had some health issue which she did not disclose.  He looked okay to us, and we’d hang out at his house on some Saturdays so he wouldn’t feel left out.

He died at age 20.

You probably know where I’m going with this.  All of this knowledge cast a shade over me for the rest of the day.  Maybe if I dug deeper, I’d find twice as many more names, but I’d had enough by then. At this rate, we could hold our sixtieth class reunion in a broom closet. Or, consolidate it with everyone who graduated from 1950-1980.

We talk about level playing fields and all people being created equal in life and the job force and all, but then why do some die before others?  True, some people take their own lives while different people unlawfully take the lives of those of us who remain.  There are people born with debilitating birth defects and so on.  There are just some things we don’t have answers for.

THE SANDS OF TIME

I have large, an old fashioned hour glass on my desk. This is the sort that has sand in it, and it is designed to hold exactly one hour’s worth of sand.  But a larger hour glass or one with a different consistency of sand might run much longer than that. Our grandkids enjoy seeing the sand pour through the narrow aperture at the waist of the glass and they could watch it for hours.  But as we adults get older, we become more pensive as we see the sand sift through. Eventually, we pretend that the hourglass is not even there. Yet, the “sands of time” eventually wipe away evidence of our existence, burying great cities under deserts and erasing footprints on the shore alike.

AND JUST WHAT IS TIME?

Time is a quality that plays an important role within the fourth dimension. It is temporal rather the a spatial, which means it relates to time and not to space (though Einstein linked the two together.) It is the only part of the fourth dimension that we can experience. A century from now this may no longer be accurate, but this is as far as our current thinking has taken us to date. Each of us has a timeline that involves decisions we’re arrived at and choices we’ve made. It exists like a movie with millions, perhaps billions of frames from our life, second-by-second. Yet, it is obviously not a movie. So it is sort of a medium through which we move, in one direction. We can’t stop time, or even slow it down. Were we to wonder whether we could travel to our past (i.e., backward in time), we would have to explain some thorny paradoxes that might arise (such as whether we could murder our grandfather when he was a child. If we could, then how could we have been born in the first place?)

Christians believe that our lives are in some way recorded for potential playback. There are Scripture passages that seem to refer to this. In fact, patients who have had a near death experience (NDE) report a “life review” as part of the subjective sequence of events they encountered after their hearts stopped. They report seeing their entire life and totality of their experiences flash by in seconds.

TIME’S ARROW

In our reality, we can classify events as belonging to one of two categories.  An event is either reversible or it is irreversible.  Examples of reversible events would be the seasons on our planet. Plants grow in spring, mature in summer, wither away in autumn and die in winter, only to begin the life cycle again the following spring.  Or, a pendulum swings one way and then the other.  For example, our present, increasingly totalitarian government in Washington won’t last forever.  Eventually, the sentiment of the people will replace it with a more moderate representation of their wishes.  As a final example, a tall parent tends to have children shorter than him, and his grandchildren are generally taller than his children.

Irreversible events would be when two planets collide and obliterate each other, or when you add milk to your coffee.  In that case, you cannot “unadd” or subtract the milk after the fact.  When standing on a river bank, water lazily drifts or wildly rushes past you as it heads downstream. That is an irreversible event.  Rivers are metaphorically used as a indication of the passage of time.  Cemeteries, nursing homes and so on often carry the term “Riverside” in their name even if there is no river nearby.  To “cross over the river” is sometimes used to denote someone who has died.  And speaking of death, when a person dies in a car accident, that is an irreversible event.  Assuming they are biologically dead when they are found, they cannot be roused or coaxed back to life.

The terms “Arrow of Time” or “Time’s Arrow” was attributed to British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington who in the early twentieth century mentioned that time flies like an arrow, forward in a single irreversible direction.  That implies that time is linear, in that before you can arrive at point “C” you must have arrived at point “B,” and your next stop would be point “D.”  If you are traveling from Chicago to Dallas and you wind up in Nashville, TN or Denver, CO, you are not traveling in a linear (i.e. straight) direction.  Similarly, we age (i.e., grow and develop) in a linear, progressive fashion.  We start as an infant, progress to childhood, then adolescence, adulthood and finally maturity.  This is as certain as an arrow flies to it’s mark, though tragically not every arrow arrives at it destination.  Likewise, not every person lives long enough to reach maturity.

DETERMINISM

Determinism is the notion that once events are set into action (such as the cue ball in a game of billiards striking the first ball, the orbit of an asteroid circling our sun or an assassin bent on murder, nothing can change the outcome. Determinism states that any notion of free will or the ability to “go against the flow” is a fantasy. In the sense of this post, each of us have a fixed day that we leave this life and nothing such as exercise, diet, and so on can change that date.

Determinism has an opposite correlate called indeterminism and it is sometimes called volunteerism. This says that cycles, orbits and life expectancies can be changed–than an alcoholic can make a rational decision to stop drinking. While there are some people who are hard core determinists, most of us are somewhere in between. Personally, I am probably ninety percent determinist though Deena is much more of an indeterminist than I.

Let me use a popular movie to illustrate determinism. The movie was called “Signs” and it starred Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. It was written, directed and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, so you can probably discern that it was a sci-fi or paranormal thriller. In fact, it was about an alien invasion and these creatures threatened the family of Mel Gibson who played a paster who left the cloth when his wife was killed in a motor vehicle accident. Angry at God for taking his wife, Gibson, his two children and his brother live on a farm in a rural county. There is only one way to defeat the alien who threatens his family, and this information was passed to him only minutes before his wife died several years earlier. The information made no sense to anyone at the time and it was dismissed as the meaningless rambling of a dying brain. The way the movie plays out, his wife needed to die for her to receive and pass on the critical information that would be needed to save her family in the future when hostile aliens arrived. Had this thread in the plot been severed (through free will), the family would have died as well several years after the mother did. I know this may be difficult to understand, but you can stream this movie and it will made more sense. Its not a gory movie or anything, just a suspenseful movie which is best viewed over a bowl of popcorn.

A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

So, let’s engage in another thought experiment.  You have a dream this evening after you go to bed.  You are in the lobby of a large library, four floors high with a million or more books in the stacks or on carts waiting to be shelved.  There are desks, study tables, atlas stands, vertical files and all sorts of nooks and crannies in this library.  You are told that there is an hour glass, clock or calendar somewhere in the library in plain view that will reveal to you the time and date of your death and it is up to you to find it.  Who among you would want to know this information?  And if you would like to know, then for what reason?  For those of you who do not wish to know, why is this so?  Is it fear?  Indifference?

Some people who say they would want to know when they are scheduled to die say this because they have some sort of unfinished business to accomplish before they die.  But in that case, why do you need to know how long you have to put this off?  What is wrong with addressing it today?  Now?  Is this a broken relationship that needs restoration? Or a will that needs to be drawn up?

Many people have gone through difficult periods in their life where they experienced alcoholism in their family, neglect, bitterness, even betrayal.  This is why so many people today can relate to the many plays that William Shakespeare wrote in his day.  And hurt feelings do not generally heal over time. I’ve assisted surgeons drain deep abscesses in a person’s body but we can also have similar festering wounds to our ego or souls–places that a surgeon cannot reach. And, we can only set things right while we live.  People who have “bucket lists” usually see the need to “close loops” or accomplish “unfinished business.”  This might apply to insurance, setting up trusts and so on, but it can also apply to relationships.  I knew a man once in his early forties whose mother called him her “little bastard” from birth.  As it turned out, his father came home late one night drunk and “sexually imposed himself on” (i.e., raped) his wife.  She got pregnant and vented her rage on the child. Every-day-of-his-life.

Hopefully, the lives of our close relatives are not that challenging, but then again, you might be surprised.  If you cannot face the person with whom you have a grievance, there are other options to a face-to-face conversation.

“We may feel we were let down or even betrayed by a parent, sibling, or friend many years ago and as a result those relationships were damaged and may no longer exist. If we have never been able to express our true feelings about those relationships, we may want to consider doing that even if we can’t say what we’ve felt to the individuals involved.

Whether we send them or not, writing a letter or an e-mail telling those people our truth about things that came between us, how we felt then and how we now feel, can unburden us. A reconciliation may come from writing the words “I’m sorry and I hope you can forgive me” or “I have forgiven you.”

Two caveats:  In the context of time as it applies to relationships, it’s not only a question of how much time left that you have to restore a relationship…It is also a question of whether the person you wronged or who wronged you dies before you.  In that case, the opportunity for a meeting no longer exists.  Still, there is some perhaps limited satisfaction and healing to you if you can tell a person how you feel, even if there is little chance that person even cares.

BUCKET LISTS

People have all sorts of different things on their bucket lists.  Some lists are pretty straight forward and practical. Others are more personal.  Still others are more exotic.  Here are a few things that people choose or life coaches recommend:

CONQUER A FEAR

Many of the items on the various bucket lists can be seen as either liberating (such as skydiving) or empowering (such as conquering a firmly entrenched fear.) This might consciously or subconsciously be because people facing death often want to assert themselves (e.g., “I’m not dead yet!”) or break out of a downward spiral.

SLEEP UNDER THE STARS

Believe it or not, there are probably millions of people in the world who have not seen the night sky in all it’s wonder and glory. These are most certainly people who live in metropolitan areas of the planet. To stand in the dark or lie on the grass on a clear night and gaze at the milky way, or to see a meteor streak overhead truly creates a sense of awe! You feel connected to something immensely larger than you and your world. You see the same patterns and designs in the stars that your ancestors saw 50,000 years ago. And speaking of ancestors, you can . . .

CONSTRUCT YOUR FAMILY TREE

Our parents and grandparents have lifetimes of memories that are locked inside them and which are lost forever when they die. You may not realize this now or care one way or another about your roots at the moment, but someday you (or your children) certainly will. You don’t have to go back to the Mayflower. And you don’t need any special skills either beyond patience and a sense of mystery and the curiosity of a sleuth. Think of this a hobby. And speaking of hobbies . . .

DEVELOP A HOBBY

There are probably things we have always wanted to do but never had the time, money or inclination. Maybe hiking the Appalachian Trail? Or collecting stamps or old maps, learning to square dance, woodworking, sewing quilts or helping others? If this brings you enjoyment, it could easily qualify as a hobby. I’ve known retired people in Texas who traveled the”Chili circuit” from town to town earning points for the world chili cookoff at Terlingua. A hobby is a good distraction when you are facing dire circumstances and it can be positively relaxing.

RUN A MARATHON

This is something many people list, but it may not be practical for you to train for if you have advanced heart disease or cancer. Then again, who says you have to wait until you are terminally ill to meet this challenge?

TRAVELING

Travel is another popular items. Many people have deferred travel until they retired at the climax of their careers, so it is perfectly logical to consider this, especially if time is a constraint. There are so many places to go today and travel, of course, is most enjoyable if there is someone you can travel with in order to share the fond memories.

THE HERE AND NOW

Isaiah 55:5 says “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” This is something of an unusual verse. What does it mean to say that God is “near?” And does that imply that there are times that God is “distant,” as someone might be on holiday (vacation?)

Strong’s lexicon interprets the Hebrew word used for “near” as follows:

“The Hebrew word “qarob” primarily denotes physical or temporal proximity. It is used to describe something that is near in space or time, such as a location that is close by or an event that is imminent.”

Another commentary suggests that there are “opportunities” for God and a woman or a man to meet that might be more “convenient” or propitious than other occasions. I know from my own life and observations of others that there are times when people earnestly call on God (such as when their safety or survival is threatened) and then when the threat has passed, they move on with their lives. The story of Noah might provide a clue.

NOAH’S ARK

Chapters six and seven in Genesis gives us a partial account of Noah. In these two chapters we can see how God and Noah progress forward in time in a linear fashion. God recognizes that humanity is rapidly getting out of control, yet he wants to spare Noah and Noah’s family because they are resisting the self-indulgence and self-destructive impulses of early humanity. So, God tells Noah to build a huge ark on dry land, perhaps miles from the nearest body of water. Likely, Noah was somewhere on the margin of society back then, else he’d have been as crazy or evil as everyone else. So, even as Noah starts building the ark, God must have been instilling some sort of homing instinct to get the different species of animals to migrate out of their environments to where the ark was. And this could have taken years for them to arrive. No doubt, people asked Noah what was up, but he might not have had much understanding and if he did, then he was likely ridiculed even more. The ark was immense and took as much as a century to build. It was shaped like a barge more than a ship, so that the waves could roll over it without it capsizing to ark. The doors were much too large for Noah and his kin to manage, so the Bible says “. . . the Lord shut him in” (7:16.) If, up to this point, some open-minded person with a clear conscience who lived in the area or happened to be passing by had started asking Noah questions about the ark and about God and then asked Noah if he could come along, God may very likely have agreed. But once the doors to the ark closed, there was nothing humanly possible that Noah could have done to let people in when the flood waters rose. So, for the people who lived back then, the opportunity to connect with God was before the rains began. After that, it was too late. And if someone back then died before the ark was completed it was too late for them. Contrary to what some religions teach, we only live once in the flesh.

LIFE HAS CONSEQUENCES

I don’t know how many dozens of students, maybe a even hundred or more over thirty years of teaching that I’ve had to turn away from an important exam because they arrived after the exam began. If it was a standardized exam like a SAT, MCAT or GRE, then my hands were tied. I had to follow the directions religiously. These tardy students had valid excuses (most did, anyway), but I had absolutely no discretion as the administrator. It was too late for them to test for that cycle. In some exams as I recall, you even had to tell the students when to turn the page. This was a signal that time had run out as far as that section of the exam was concerned. So, even as God provides penalties for nonfeasance, we as humans do as well.

In II Corinthians 6:2 God says through the Apostle Paul “now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!” The Greek word for “now” is νῦν. This adverb almost “screams” at the reader with a sense of urgency. It is meant to be emphasized the way we would emphasize a fire in a building or warn people of a potential danger (e.g. “Get down!” or “Take cover!” “Fire!”) So, I would be failing you as a friend, as a blogger, as a Christian if I did not point that out.

So, before you close your browser and leave this page, might this not be a good opportunity to speak to God, especially if He seems near at the moment. You don’t need to worry. He probably won’t send you to some mosquito-infested rain forest or ask you to stand on the corner of Delaware and Kenwood on a Tuesday night with a sign. But then, He’s God and who knows what plans, what opportunities, what love He has in store for you? There is only one way to find out.