Chronology

I have blogged on time before, but this is not so much on the nature of time as on the timing of events. Somethings precede other things. Layers below other layers were laid down first. It's a foundational principle of geology. The beginning of a story comes before the end. I learned something before I knew how to do it. Everything happens in sequences.

But in my life, in my perception, things seem to happen out of joint sometimes. An event can come before it's cause. A explanation may come before the question. It's really bizarre when it happens.

Sometimes it isn't so much out of sequence as just vastly distanced. For example, yesterday I was talking with my boss at work about an idea to resolve a particular situation. I would need to revise a document and possibly build a program out of it. He said to take my time because there was no rush. So today, I remembered that I had already written something related in the past. I couldn't remember why, other than at the time I thought it might be useful someday. So I found the document and it was exactly what I had been asked to write the day before. It perfectly addressed the very situation that I was facing, that didn't arise until the past month or so. And I wrote it in 2007!

I wrote the answer before I even perceived the question! Before I even foresaw that the question would come! Now of course, maybe I did simply know my job well enough to think through possibilities and it was all just good planning. But come on...I didn't change anything in it. It was exactly what I needed to write. And at the time there was no impetus to write it. I just thought it might be a good idea someday and then filed it away. Even the fact that I remembered it is amazing to me. Just last weekend I completely forgot that I had written something that I wrote only a week or two before. Someone showed it to me and I didn't recognize that I had written it. They told me I had...after which time I did finally remember.

I would just think this is one of those weird coincidences and explain it away if it weren't for the comments of my spiritual director a while ago. He said to me while we were talking that I had been seeing things happen out of time sequence. I hadn't told him I was having that happen. He just knew it because that's what happens with spiritual directors. It's a relationship arranged by God. But I hadn't thought about it before. He told me that this was common among contemplatives because reality is beyond time and when we start to move in that world, this one becomes far less stable...or rather we begin to see how unstable this world really is.

It's really true. From time to time, I'll have a moment click and it feels like tumblers fall into place, unlocking a bit more of the door. In that click, I can see how all the other dials and plates had been turning to align across time so that at this one moment the tumbler would fall into place. Some of those plates are nearer, others are behind, and they don't necessarily align in sequence.