Timeless Time

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Trinity Episcopal Church
44 East Market St.
Bethlehem PA 18018-5989
610-867-4741

Timeless Time
Fr. Nick Knisely - Written for Newsletter, April 2001

I rode my bike this week for the first time this year. I love so much about riding a bicycle, from the way the gravel sprays from the back tire when you take a turn too quickly, to the speed and the excitement of riding along a long open stretch of roadway. But I think what I love most about my bicycle, is that while I'm on it, I'm out of time. I don't mean that I've run out of time, but that when I'm on the bike, I feel timeless. I'm not sure why that is exactly, except that perhaps the feeling of the wind in my face, and sound of the tires on the road and the stress of exertion when peddling up a hill, all combine to drive home to me that I am away from the environment that I normally inhabit - a chair, at a desk, in front of a computer monitor.

More than anything, riding reminds me of my favorite moment of recreation (and one that I haven't had a chance to experience in years) of a sailboat pulling away from a dock. When I'm on the boat, and moving away from the dock, I know (or did before the invention of cell phones) that I was going to be out of touch for a while, and that since I was at the mercy of the winds and the waves, I might as well just take my watch off, and keep time by the location of the sun in the sky. In the act of removing my watch, I feel like I am leaving the modern world of schedules, tasks and meetings and returning to a more primitive, natural existence. At that moment I am moving into a new relationship with time, entering a timeless time. It is to me a foretaste of what Eternity feels like.

There is a time in the Christian liturgical year that is meant to evoke the same feeling. The experience of three days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter and the proper liturgies of each are meant to connect across the ages to the three days in Jerusalem when Christ suffered, died and triumphed. They have always felt to me as if they were a time apart, a moment frozen in amber, captured and eternally unchanging.

Every year as we enter Holy Week and draw closer to the holiest three days of the church year, the Tridium, I find myself slipping back into my experience of the timelessness of those days. Somehow they always feel the same to me - sacred and eternal, a life of triumph rescued from a moment of despair. The first time I truly gave myself over to the experience of the Tridium was the first time that I truly understood Easter, and truly felt the joy of the Church encountering the empty tomb.

But like so much in life, the experience of Tridium is directly proportional to the commitment you are willing to make to it. In the years when I've found myself with too much to do on the Easter weekend, when I'm popping into church, and really just marking time by being present at the services, I don't get much spiritually from the experience. Occasionally I'll be surprised by the way a hymn will move me, or a line in a sermon that inspires me, but the somehow the three days don't have the eternal timeless quality that I've experienced so often. It's when I plan in advance to have all my busy work done early in Holy Week, and warn all my friends and family that I'm going to be intentionally praying for three days, that I find myself feeling the familiar sense of timelessness again. Perhaps I have to be still in my life for the stillness of Tridium to be available to me. Whatever the root cause, I do know that, if I've done my preparation, come Maundy Thursday evening and the beginning of the journey, it feels just like I'm on a boat, pulling away from a dock. And I take my watch off - and throw myself on God, and find myself again in time of timelessness.

My fervent prayer for you this year is that you would have the opportunity to once again enter into the ageless, timeless wonder of the holiest days of our Church calendar, and feel again the wonder of the gift that God has given us.

Blessings upon you this Eastertide.

-Nick+

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Trinity Episcopal Church
44 East Market St.
Bethlehem PA 18018-5989
610-867-4741