Yesterday I went to drop off two of my in-law’s clocks at a tiny workshop where a lady fixes antique time machines. The lady was a story in itself, but for this post, I want to focus on the clocks. My husband has almost a clock obsession. He has plans of someday building a clock tower attached to a chapel (that is in the plans as well). The clock will run with carved wood pieces. I am probably not technical enough to explain all this, nor do I really understand it all, but for the sake of time—that’s simple a really old way of making clocks. In fact, so old that it goes back to the monasteries.

It was the monastic life that created a need for the invention of clocks in the first place. In our fast, rushed, to-the-minute lifestyle, who could have guessed that the original purpose for the daily hours, was, well…The Daily Hours (i.e. the prayers and readings of the Church)? The mechanical time-keeper allowed nuns and monks to keep track of the hours of prayer, thus inciting the bell-ringer to call the community to worship and discipleship.

My husband recently bought a pocket-watch that is over a hundred years old. Because it was made a hundred years ago it is still working. It is a quality piece of workmanship. If you open up the back, you can literally watch time unfold. The gears click and turn, and so goes our seconds, minutes, hours. I am constantly becoming more aware of how fast time goes by as I watch it tick through its moments. The trees we plant in our yard this fall, will be full grown when I turn about sixty, and my life will be drawing to an end. It’s a sober reminder that we are but a breath and that all things pass away.

But in those moments as we watch time go by, how do we somehow reclaim the rhythm of the first clocks that were built in the monasteries? How do we find sacred time while we are here on earth? One way, of course, is to reclaim those hours of prayer as first used in the monasteries. When we have retreats come to my husband’s ministry, we do just that. (Although, not all the hours—there is a place for that, but probably not in the initiation phase!). But keeping the hours of prayer isn’t for everyone, and I realize that. As I’ve been thinking about clocks in the past many months, I have watched the church seasons go by. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. The end of the year and the beginning of the year is just packed with theological significance. Each season rolls into another and they disciple us and mold us. They are also different every year as we go through life and change ourselves. The season right now, however, is Ordinary Time. I was slightly disappointed the first year I celebrated these seasons. Ordinary Time almost seemed like the wind had gone of the seasons. But Ordinary Time is always looking back at Pentecost and forward to Advent. Ordinary Time also just rests. But while we rest, we are reminded that all time, even Ordinary Time, can be made holy. We are God’s people and we participate in a faith community that exists separate from any other time period. We participate in these seasons with the saints before us and those who will come after us. We may be but a breath on this earth, but, as Christ to the world, we may reign with Him forever. One God, now and forever, world without end, Alleluia, Amen.