Contemplation Corner: ‘Before the clock, time was natural’

“Before [the clock, 1370], time was natural. It was linked to the rotation of the earth on its axis and the four seasons. You went to bed with the moon and got up with the sun. Days were long and busy in the summer, short and slow in the winter. There was a rhythm to the day and even the year. Life was ‘dominated by agrarian rhythms, free of haste, careless of exactitude, unconcerned by productivity,’….But the clock changed all that: it created artificial time—the slog of the nine-to-five all year long. We stopped listening to our bodies and started rising when our alarms droned their oppressive siren—not when our bodies were done resting. We became more efficient, yes, but also more machine, less human being.”  -John Mark Comer (The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry)

by Pastor Donnie Brooks
Marcellus United Methodist Church
pastordonnieb@outlook.com

   Imagine life without a clock. How lost we would be. I think to my own life. What was my life before I really “watched the time.” I had a watch growing up in my teen years, but before that I probably didn’t ever really think about it much. My first was probably a Timex: nothing fancy. And maybe my alarm clock. But I’d check my watch a lot. Eventually, I let that go. I just carried my flip phone. Had that in my pocket. Maybe checked less, but I almost grasped on to that with fervor more for the grasp of time than of the potential for phone call or text messages. Now, the smart phone and a Fitbit truly are my masters. How often do I look at the time throughout the day? 

   On the computer I have a clock too. The computer with which I spend my time before work, during work, and after work. I’m writing this with a preoccupation with time to make sure I won’t be late to work. I will watch the clock when I get into work to make sure I clock in to make sure every moment I get the value of my timed-labors. In that time, I am the employer’s, right? Don’t log in early or log off late!!! I must watch the time when it’s time for me to take a lunch break and when to get back. It must be exact too.

   How different from my early childhood though. Before the watch. Before the phone. Before work. When I was just a kid…before the cares and adulthood, right? But isn’t that just the history of the world before the watch. Sure, we were less efficient. Sure, we may have squandered more time. Sure, a lot of the advances of technology were sped up with these things. But are we happier because of the mastery of time? Or is it our masters? How can we give back time to its natural and even Divine form? Most religions have a sabbath of sorts, whether a season or a day of the week (or both). An escape even from the primitive conceptions and quantifications of time. Maybe trying out a sabbath of a sort each day, a respite from time without watches or efficient awareness of the slicing and dicing in time would help us much. Then maybe a whole day…and more, free of this tyrant, would save us.

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