2018:5 - Pace

Egypt can tax the patience of even the most laid-back and patient Westerners. Laid-back and patient are rarely words that are used to describe me. Here schedules are often suggestions, appointments signal desires, and Insha’Allah (God willing) is the tentative confirmation of every plan that's made. At seminary, classes end at 10 minutes to the hour, but the class bell might ring anytime from 15 minutes before the hour, to three minutes before the hour, to never. For an agenda-driven person like myself, this can be maddening. But it can also be eye-opening when I let it be.

The fluidity of time, the tentative nature of all plans, allows for a responsiveness to the present moment. When a friend appears at your door, you stop and invite them in to visit, rather than excuse yourself because someone else is expecting you. When a stranger asks for assistance, you stop and help rather than pass by because of the appointment awaiting you. Biblical Greek describes time using the words, chronos and kairos. Chronos is the time we measure by dividing into seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. Kairos is God's time - the time of ripeness when what needs to happen in the moment, happens. By these definitions, Egyptians, in general, live more in kairos. I have been taught my whole life to live by chronos.

There are days, I confess, when the frustration caused by the collision of these two concepts of time bubbles over the surface and I snap. But there is gift in living more kairos than chronos. Guided by kairos, I am more attentive to my surroundings and circumstances. I dare to cancel appointments because I realize I'm not at feeling up to it or I acknowledge my spirit is not into the task at hand. I stop to sit with a friend, rather than pressing on to the next thing in my calendar or the next task on my list. When I'm focused on chronos -- keeping schedules, being "on time" -- I rarely pay attention to what's happening around me, or even within me. I simply press on with the list, the task, the to-dos in the hope that in the end it will be enough.

I learn the most about myself, however, when my clock is set to chronos and people around me are living kairos. This often happens to me on my teaching days at seminary. The other day I was waiting for students to return from their 10-minute break between classes. When the appointed time for their return came and went and my classroom remained empty, I found myself setting the stop watch on my clock to count precisely the seconds until they returned. Somehow I thought knowing exactly how late they were would make me feel better (not my best moment, to be sure).

When the final student strolled in several minutes late, I suppressed my urge to give a lesson in American time and Egyptian time. God knows they've heard that lesson before from me. Instead I asked, what had caused his delay. "My friends needed to talk with me." My friends needed me ... now ... in this moment. Maybe there isn't a better reason to live.