By Cathy Hird

"The beginning of the long dash after ten seconds of silence marks exactly 1 o'clock Eastern Standard Time." With this broadcast from CBC, we can all check the accuracy of our clocks. Some watches have a tendency to slow down. The clock on the stove gets bumped ahead. This broadcast lets us get back to the proper time.

Clocks mark time with the tick of the seconds. Objectively, time passed with a steady even beat. But that is not how we experience time.

Waiting in a long grocery line when we are already late, each swipe of an item past the scanner takes an unbelievably long time. The Interac machine takes forever to process the card of the person in front of us. The staff person who is packing has ten thumbs as they pay too much attention to getting the cans balanced between bags. We have no idea how many ticks of our watch went by; we just feel that this checkout is unbearably slow.

When we are working to a deadline, clocks speed up. We type as fast as we can, but we cannot keep ahead of the ticking minutes. We push our thoughts onto the paper, but we cannot get them ordered fast enough. The calculations do not work the first time or the second. Normally that would be okay and the third time would work. But somehow, this deadline is getting closer and closer at breakneck speed.

We sit with a friend for coffee, start to catch up on what happened over the holidays. We look at the clock and two hours have passed. Where did the minutes go? We long for a quiet week, one where time flows smoothly and quietly past, carrying us gently forward.

Often this uneven passage of time does not matter much. It is a curiosity. But when a sudden event changes life, an accident or the passing of a loved one, there is a dramatic difference between one second and the next. This instantaneous shift disorients us. We wish time would slow down. We wish events could be rewound.

And what about this change in the calendar as we shift from one year to the next? Some of us make resolutions about things we will work to change along with the date. We take a moment to review the joys and accomplishments of the past year. We set goals we hope to accomplish in this time-frame.

But we do not control time. We do not have the power to determine the speed of its passing or what it brings our way. No New Year's resolution will slow down the clock.

There is an ancient and familiar poem that comes from the Hebrew scripture which calls us to recognize that time is beyond our control. In it, we may hear a tone of resignation: just give in, because what will be already is. I do think that acceptance is part of the message. The writer also wanted to make sure we see the balance of time that brings both mourning and dancing. Also, these words remind us of the wholeness of a year, which brings seedtime and harvest because seedtime will come again. The last words offer the hope that the divine transcendence recognizes what is lost, what is missing and keeps reaching for wholeness.

For me, what this poem offers is a sense of a circle, one that does not stop with the end of a day or a year. As we enter a new year, I offer these ancient words of reassurance:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted...
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak...
"That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by." (NRSV)

Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.