The Art/Writing - Kairos

Kairos

I attended a retreat for work yesterday.  It was called "The ordering of Our Days" and I had been afraid that it was going to be some deadly time management workshop.  I was not especially looking forward to it.  But it was in a beautiful  place (Estes Park, Colorado) and I was looking forward to spending time with the people I work with away from the pressures of school.  So early in the morning, before the sun was up, I set off on my three hour drive to the mountains. The sunrise was spectacular and it was a breathtakingly beautiful drive.   I took the toll road around Denver, missing all the city traffic and, except for a few small towns,  had only farmland and prairie to look at until I reached the mountains.  I got there in plenty of time and when the speaker, Peter Cobb, began the workshop I was very pleasantly surprised. 

It turned out that we did not spend the day figuring out how to schedule in more, more efficiently.  No.  We spent the day thinking about that delicious "time out of time"  that you  rarely get to afford yourself:  that nourishing "dream-time' that we all need but rarely get, especially at work. 

Several times during the day we were asked to wander out into the woods surrounding the building we were in and sit alone and think about prescribed topics.  I would have to look them up to tell you what they were, exactly.   But on one of those assigned meditations I found myself sitting at the base of a tree humming an old hymn that had been one of my favorites when I was a child at English boarding school.  I mention this because it was a time in my life when the  ordering of my days seemed especially balanced and nurturing.  We started every day with matins after breakfast and ended each day with evensong before dinner in the evening.  There was Communion every Thursday morning before breakfast and church every Sunday.  There was a spiritual dimension to the schedule of every day.  And it was at this time in my life that I first learned the hymn I found myself humming.

This turned out to be a little embarrassing as one of my colleagues  came down the hill behind me while I was humming this hymn, trying to remember the words.  I didn't know she was there until it was too late to cover up the fact that I was singing rather badly to myself, alone, in the woods.  But embarrassing as it was, it paid off, because I remembered enough of the first line to find it on my iPhone.  It was "Lord of All Hopefulness" and it was written by Jan Struther, who also wrote Mrs.Miniver.  The hymn was first published in 1931. 

I thought about sharing with the group about my strange and unplanned bursting into song and reading them the text of the hymn.  But it seemed too silly and frankly, too religious for the venue.  So I sat under the tree and tried to rewrite the verses in a more secular and inclusive way.   This is what I got and at this time in my life it works rather well for me. 

Dawn of all hopefulness, sunrise of joy,
Whose trust ever childlike no care can destroy
Be there at my waking and in my heart stay
Bringing bliss in my heart at the break of the day

Light of all eagerness, light of all work
That brightens my efforts and illumines my words
Be there at my labors and give me I pray
Great strength in my heart at the noon of the day

Twilight of kindness, sunset of grace
Your dusk swift to welcome, your breeze to embrace
Be there at my homing and safe from the fray
With love in my heart at the end of the day.

Dark of all gentleness, dark of all calm
Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm,
Be there at my sleeping and give me this day
Your peace in my heart at the end of the day.


I hope Ms. Struthers is not turning in her grave!

As an addendum: ' kairos' also means 'weather' in both ancient and modern Greek.  In college I wrote a poem about telling time from, or by, the weather.   I think that the notion of time out of time was what I was after, but I did not know the word kairos then and I have lost the poem long ago.