Life flows not only by days, weeks and years, but is also marked by once-in-a-lifetime events, chance meetings of utter significance, special encounters, eureka! moments. And they cannot be ordered to come. Chronology can be planned, but these special times cannot. The ancient Greeks called this other kind of time 'kairos'.
'Kairos' moments cannot be fabricated or had at a whim, they seem to be more in the line of something that interrupts the 'chronos' of our normal life, and brings a challenge to change in its wake.
So much of my life as a researcher revolves around 'chronos': deadlines, extensions of grants etc, but yet, the substance of my research comes from those 'kairos' moments periods of time.
Wikipedia says, "In rhetoric kairos is "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved."
The connotation there is that not only is there a window of opportunity, but that skill is also needed to use it, to actually achieve that which the specific time-bound opportunity makes possible for one to achieve. In built in 'kairos' is the idea of the "right time" for something to happen.
I find myself this spring in such a time in my research, in a season where it truly will be possible to write what I have so long carried in me. But in order to be successful, I must take hold of the crucial time, lest it passes.
'Kairos' has many more meanings too, and it is an integral part of Christian theology as well, the Eternal intersects the temporal at 'kairos' times.
What ever the kind of 'kairos' given to us this coming chronological year, may we not miss even one them!
NOW is the right time!
Hic et Nunc :)
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