[Music]
I am under the impression that we’re not
supposed to timestamp these
presentations so that they would be
dated too quickly so I’m going to
violate the TEDx protocol right off the
bat and say that we are staging this
event toward the end of the year 2017 we
used to say the year of our Lord 2017
but the little initials next to the date
ad on O Domini year of our Lord
but those initials have been replaced in
the wider culture of course by the
letters C II the Common Era a more
religiously neutral designation for the
year a couple months ago though our
Jewish neighbors celebrated their New
Year’s and they don’t use C E or ad they
said goodbye to the Year 5777 and
welcomed in 5778 a M which means on a
Monday the year of the world the year
zero on the Hebrew calendar is the year
3760 before the Common Era which is the
traditional date for creation about the
same time our Muslim friends assured in
the new year it was out with 1438 and in
with 1439 aah-aah no history which means
the year of the migration when the first
Muslims moved from Mecca to Medina which
happened in the year 622 of the Common
Era or exactly 1395 years ago if you’re
doing math in your head and wondering
why it’s called 1439 well it’s because
our Muslim friends follow a lunar
calendar not a solar calendar so it’s
1439 aah trust me
of course in a couple of months our
Chinese friends around the world will
say goodbye to 47:15 and hello to 47:16
aah oh no wrong D the first year of the
reign of a legendary Chinese emperor and
if you don’t know that number maybe you
know that they will
so say farewell to the year of the
rooster and welcome in the year of the
dog another feature of the Chinese
calendar not too many weeks after that
my Baha’i friends will mark the very
beginning of the year 175 because it
will be exactly a hundred and seventy
four years after an important
pronouncement by one of their two
founders of founders of the Baha’i faith
so it will be the beginning of 175 b/e
of the Baha’i era probably goes without
saying that the number that is the
starting point on any culture or
religions calendar it’s a really
important number I mean it tells you
what that group of people considers to
be the pivotal moment in their history
it’s more than just a reference point on
the calendar though for many people I
mean for many people it is the reference
point for everything including how we
spend our time and we certainly spend
our time and save time and waste time
what you may not know is that we’re some
of the few people in the world and this
half of the globe that speak of time in
those terms it’s called the reification
of time taking an abstraction and
turning turning it into a concrete
commodity that you can buy sell save
waste when we speak of it in that way
the rest of the world hears that like
nonsense but this is part of our
cultural heritage your people who travel
a lot or maybe you yourself have
experienced it you go to some other
place you come back and you say you know
people in country X are not time
conscious like we are actually you
should know that everyone in the world
is time conscious just not time
conscious in the same way so the more
precise way to say that is they’re not
perhaps clock conscious like we are in a
clock conscious society ours is called a
linear culture where we measure time
with a clock put important dates on time
lines because from the majority cultures
perspective there’s a beginning and
there is an end in time all
proceeds in one direction well that’s
linear time many cultures of the world
see time cyclically if you believe for
example in reincarnation you believe
that what goes around comes around that
who goes around comes around
timelines wouldn’t make sense to you but
time circles would make sense
anthropologists have even added another
category to linear and cyclical time
they talk about pendulum time which is
perhaps a suitable description for the
way people in agrarian societies
describe time it’s a pendulum that goes
back and forth between the rainy season
and the dry season between summer and
winter between planting and harvest and
then again back and forth next year and
the year after pendulum time now in a
clock oriented culture like this one we
measure time down to the second
sometimes even down to the split second
depending on what it is we’re trying to
measure if it’s a hundred meter dash
you need split seconds if we’re trying
to figure out if the shooter release the
ball before the buzzer sounded at the
end of the basketball game then we need
split seconds again many people in much
of the world have no need for seconds
they don’t really even need minutes in
cyclical cultures or pendulum time
oriented cultures it’s the event itself
that’s important if the event is a
memorial service or a celebration of
some kind doesn’t matter what the
official start time might be what
matters is that we wait till everybody’s
there and then that’s when we begin so
for obvious reasons when people from
different cultures or even different sub
cultures interact and bring with them
their different interpretations of time
sometimes collisions happen their
disagreements over what it means to be
late or early what it means to be on
time but it doesn’t really have to be
just people from different cultures I
mean sometimes even those of us in the
same culture are not on the same page
that time right I mean how many of us in
this room are annoyed when people are
late
whatever late means in your world how
many people are annoyed at people who
are annoyed when people are late they’re
just too uptight about being on time
which brings to mind an unflattering
story about me I was coming home one
afternoon there’s only one cook in our
household sorry and she was in the
kitchen preparing the meal I said honey
how long before dinner and she said oh
it’ll be a little while I was looking
for something a little more precise than
that so I asked again so 10 minutes 15
minutes can you ballpark in here for me
and she said well I don’t know it’ll be
a little while and then I said in an
uncharacteristically short voice you’re
not gonna tell me are you my wife
stepped back from the sink or the
kitchen or the stove or if she wasn’t
she looked at me with this look that
said what’s wrong with you and I was
surprised in my own reaction myself and
I thought about it I realized what I’m
really asking is is it possible that I
have time to do a 10 minute task maybe a
15 minute task before it’s time for
dinner where we sit down as a family and
now I become family man doing family
time but no she wouldn’t tell me it’ll
be a little while you see along with the
clock orientation comes this task
orientation unfortunately it’s a package
deal I know you won’t like that some of
you but I can’t help it there’s so much
to do and there’s so little time so
sometimes I’m in too big of a hurry
I suffer from what one author John
Ortberg calls her e sickness if you
haven’t had a check-up lately well
you’re in luck I’m very familiar with
the symptoms I can tell you if you’re
suffering from the same malady or not do
you for example rush through tasks
because you find it so satisfying to
check them off your to-do lists that
sometimes you rush through the task a
little too quickly
not paying enough attention to the
details maybe you don’t read the whole
email just part of the email anybody do
that besides me if you’re out there
thinking multitasking is next to
godliness you might be suffering from a
case of hurry sickness yourself I’ve
discovered that if multitasking means
I’m checking my email on my phone while
also listening to my wife report on her
day then multitasking is next to not
counting at all as listening your room
cluttered your personal space to clutter
there’s your schedule too cluttered
because either you don’t take the time
to put things where they belong or your
inclination is to overcommit or even
worse could it be that you find that
your relationships are somewhat
superficial because you’re in too big of
a hurry
depth takes time or maybe you come home
at the end of a day your tank is empty
you suffer from what John Ortberg also
called sunset fatigue nothing left to
give to the people you say you love the
most all of those are really good
reasons to practice what he calls
slowing to build some time for Sabbath
into the rhythms of our lives because
wherever you’re coming from in the world
whatever your perception is about time I
think we would all agree that time is
limited I really feel that the older I
get as each year ticks off the calendar
I mean every year that follows his a
smaller fraction of the year that came
before this year is 150 seventh of my
life I remember as a younger person
looking ahead and wondering will I live
to see the year 2000 if I do and I see
the year 2000 I will have had my
fortieth birthday about six weeks before
I live to see 40 and now I think 40 I
thought that was old in the year 2000 I
did live to see the year 2000 and now
the thought that that was 17 years ago I
can’t believe it just flown by
but 17 years 40 years 57 years those
little relatively little time spans
barely register on the greater timeline
or time circle if you prefer which only
highlights the wisdom I hear in the
words of an ancient him teach us to
number our days are right that we may
gain a heart of wisdom surely part of
numbering our days are right he’s
learning the difference between what the
ancient Greeks we call Chronos and
Kairos Chronos the relentless ticking of
the clock the inexorably passage of time
Chronos represented in images by this
old man with a long gray beard and a
cyst in his hand and a sinister look in
his eyes as opposed to Kairos which you
could translate as timeliness or timing
but it’s more than that to me when I’m
sitting with one of my grandchildren and
we’re reading a story together I mean
that that’s a Kairos moment when it’s at
the end of my day and I’m catching up on
the details of my wife’s day that’s a
Kairos moment when my grown children and
their children are gathered around our
Thanksgiving table when I’m sitting in
my office and involved in an unhurried
conversation listening to someone who’s
hurt and needs to be heard those are
Kairos moments and I suppose then for us
the challenge is can we seize those
moments can we make a whole year a
Kairos year and not just that can we
make next month next week can we make
tomorrow a Kairos kind of day or do what
maybe comes more naturally or
least comes easier and that is plow the
same old ruts and just watch them get
deeper and we find ourselves more stuck
1985 in South Africa a group of
ministers still living in the entrenched
separatism that was apartheid said
that’s it and I quote the time has come
the moment has arrived they circulated
their petition for change in a document
that was called the Kairos document I
don’t know if you make new year’s
resolutions I don’t but surely it’s a
good idea for all of us to make little
Kairos proclamations along the way I do
not want to sit idly by and watch the
clock run out I don’t I don’t want to
slip into autopilot and not be
intentional about the way I spend my
time I refuse to let the Chronos beat
out the Kairos so this year this month
this week tomorrow I plan to show up on
time thank you
[Applause]
I am under the impression that we’re not
supposed to timestamp these
presentations so that they would be
dated too quickly so I’m going to
violate the TEDx protocol right off the
bat and say that we are staging this
event toward the end of the year 2017 we
used to say the year of our Lord 2017
but the little initials next to the date
ad on O Domini year of our Lord
but those initials have been replaced in
the wider culture of course by the
letters C II the Common Era a more
religiously neutral designation for the
year a couple months ago though our
Jewish neighbors celebrated their New
Year’s and they don’t use C E or ad they
said goodbye to the Year 5777 and
welcomed in 5778 a M which means on a
Monday the year of the world the year
zero on the Hebrew calendar is the year
3760 before the Common Era which is the
traditional date for creation about the
same time our Muslim friends assured in
the new year it was out with 1438 and in
with 1439 aah-aah no history which means
the year of the migration when the first
Muslims moved from Mecca to Medina which
happened in the year 622 of the Common
Era or exactly 1395 years ago if you’re
doing math in your head and wondering
why it’s called 1439 well it’s because
our Muslim friends follow a lunar
calendar not a solar calendar so it’s
1439 aah trust me
of course in a couple of months our
Chinese friends around the world will
say goodbye to 47:15 and hello to 47:16
aah oh no wrong D the first year of the
reign of a legendary Chinese emperor and
if you don’t know that number maybe you
know that they will
so say farewell to the year of the
rooster and welcome in the year of the
dog another feature of the Chinese
calendar not too many weeks after that
my Baha’i friends will mark the very
beginning of the year 175 because it
will be exactly a hundred and seventy
four years after an important
pronouncement by one of their two
founders of founders of the Baha’i faith
so it will be the beginning of 175 b/e
of the Baha’i era probably goes without
saying that the number that is the
starting point on any culture or
religions calendar it’s a really
important number I mean it tells you
what that group of people considers to
be the pivotal moment in their history
it’s more than just a reference point on
the calendar though for many people I
mean for many people it is the reference
point for everything including how we
spend our time and we certainly spend
our time and save time and waste time
what you may not know is that we’re some
of the few people in the world and this
half of the globe that speak of time in
those terms it’s called the reification
of time taking an abstraction and
turning turning it into a concrete
commodity that you can buy sell save
waste when we speak of it in that way
the rest of the world hears that like
nonsense but this is part of our
cultural heritage your people who travel
a lot or maybe you yourself have
experienced it you go to some other
place you come back and you say you know
people in country X are not time
conscious like we are actually you
should know that everyone in the world
is time conscious just not time
conscious in the same way so the more
precise way to say that is they’re not
perhaps clock conscious like we are in a
clock conscious society ours is called a
linear culture where we measure time
with a clock put important dates on time
lines because from the majority cultures
perspective there’s a beginning and
there is an end in time all
proceeds in one direction well that’s
linear time many cultures of the world
see time cyclically if you believe for
example in reincarnation you believe
that what goes around comes around that
who goes around comes around
timelines wouldn’t make sense to you but
time circles would make sense
anthropologists have even added another
category to linear and cyclical time
they talk about pendulum time which is
perhaps a suitable description for the
way people in agrarian societies
describe time it’s a pendulum that goes
back and forth between the rainy season
and the dry season between summer and
winter between planting and harvest and
then again back and forth next year and
the year after pendulum time now in a
clock oriented culture like this one we
measure time down to the second
sometimes even down to the split second
depending on what it is we’re trying to
measure if it’s a hundred meter dash
you need split seconds if we’re trying
to figure out if the shooter release the
ball before the buzzer sounded at the
end of the basketball game then we need
split seconds again many people in much
of the world have no need for seconds
they don’t really even need minutes in
cyclical cultures or pendulum time
oriented cultures it’s the event itself
that’s important if the event is a
memorial service or a celebration of
some kind doesn’t matter what the
official start time might be what
matters is that we wait till everybody’s
there and then that’s when we begin so
for obvious reasons when people from
different cultures or even different sub
cultures interact and bring with them
their different interpretations of time
sometimes collisions happen their
disagreements over what it means to be
late or early what it means to be on
time but it doesn’t really have to be
just people from different cultures I
mean sometimes even those of us in the
same culture are not on the same page
that time right I mean how many of us in
this room are annoyed when people are
late
whatever late means in your world how
many people are annoyed at people who
are annoyed when people are late they’re
just too uptight about being on time
which brings to mind an unflattering
story about me I was coming home one
afternoon there’s only one cook in our
household sorry and she was in the
kitchen preparing the meal I said honey
how long before dinner and she said oh
it’ll be a little while I was looking
for something a little more precise than
that so I asked again so 10 minutes 15
minutes can you ballpark in here for me
and she said well I don’t know it’ll be
a little while and then I said in an
uncharacteristically short voice you’re
not gonna tell me are you my wife
stepped back from the sink or the
kitchen or the stove or if she wasn’t
she looked at me with this look that
said what’s wrong with you and I was
surprised in my own reaction myself and
I thought about it I realized what I’m
really asking is is it possible that I
have time to do a 10 minute task maybe a
15 minute task before it’s time for
dinner where we sit down as a family and
now I become family man doing family
time but no she wouldn’t tell me it’ll
be a little while you see along with the
clock orientation comes this task
orientation unfortunately it’s a package
deal I know you won’t like that some of
you but I can’t help it there’s so much
to do and there’s so little time so
sometimes I’m in too big of a hurry
I suffer from what one author John
Ortberg calls her e sickness if you
haven’t had a check-up lately well
you’re in luck I’m very familiar with
the symptoms I can tell you if you’re
suffering from the same malady or not do
you for example rush through tasks
because you find it so satisfying to
check them off your to-do lists that
sometimes you rush through the task a
little too quickly
not paying enough attention to the
details maybe you don’t read the whole
email just part of the email anybody do
that besides me if you’re out there
thinking multitasking is next to
godliness you might be suffering from a
case of hurry sickness yourself I’ve
discovered that if multitasking means
I’m checking my email on my phone while
also listening to my wife report on her
day then multitasking is next to not
counting at all as listening your room
cluttered your personal space to clutter
there’s your schedule too cluttered
because either you don’t take the time
to put things where they belong or your
inclination is to overcommit or even
worse could it be that you find that
your relationships are somewhat
superficial because you’re in too big of
a hurry
depth takes time or maybe you come home
at the end of a day your tank is empty
you suffer from what John Ortberg also
called sunset fatigue nothing left to
give to the people you say you love the
most all of those are really good
reasons to practice what he calls
slowing to build some time for Sabbath
into the rhythms of our lives because
wherever you’re coming from in the world
whatever your perception is about time I
think we would all agree that time is
limited I really feel that the older I
get as each year ticks off the calendar
I mean every year that follows his a
smaller fraction of the year that came
before this year is 150 seventh of my
life I remember as a younger person
looking ahead and wondering will I live
to see the year 2000 if I do and I see
the year 2000 I will have had my
fortieth birthday about six weeks before
I live to see 40 and now I think 40 I
thought that was old in the year 2000 I
did live to see the year 2000 and now
the thought that that was 17 years ago I
can’t believe it just flown by
but 17 years 40 years 57 years those
little relatively little time spans
barely register on the greater timeline
or time circle if you prefer which only
highlights the wisdom I hear in the
words of an ancient him teach us to
number our days are right that we may
gain a heart of wisdom surely part of
numbering our days are right he’s
learning the difference between what the
ancient Greeks we call Chronos and
Kairos Chronos the relentless ticking of
the clock the inexorably passage of time
Chronos represented in images by this
old man with a long gray beard and a
cyst in his hand and a sinister look in
his eyes as opposed to Kairos which you
could translate as timeliness or timing
but it’s more than that to me when I’m
sitting with one of my grandchildren and
we’re reading a story together I mean
that that’s a Kairos moment when it’s at
the end of my day and I’m catching up on
the details of my wife’s day that’s a
Kairos moment when my grown children and
their children are gathered around our
Thanksgiving table when I’m sitting in
my office and involved in an unhurried
conversation listening to someone who’s
hurt and needs to be heard those are
Kairos moments and I suppose then for us
the challenge is can we seize those
moments can we make a whole year a
Kairos year and not just that can we
make next month next week can we make
tomorrow a Kairos kind of day or do what
maybe comes more naturally or
least comes easier and that is plow the
same old ruts and just watch them get
deeper and we find ourselves more stuck
1985 in South Africa a group of
ministers still living in the entrenched
separatism that was apartheid said
that’s it and I quote the time has come
the moment has arrived they circulated
their petition for change in a document
that was called the Kairos document I
don’t know if you make new year’s
resolutions I don’t but surely it’s a
good idea for all of us to make little
Kairos proclamations along the way I do
not want to sit idly by and watch the
clock run out I don’t I don’t want to
slip into autopilot and not be
intentional about the way I spend my
time I refuse to let the Chronos beat
out the Kairos so this year this month
this week tomorrow I plan to show up on
time thank you
[Applause]
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