2008, October 27: Clockwatchers.

for 10/27-31/08

CLOCKWATCHERS

Just for a second imagine you wanted to be recruited for the next academy. Would that be how you described yourself in the interviews? Or, would you put it on your resume? And, if that was in bold print on your evaluations would that give you an edge on the promotion list? Hardly! It indicates someone who wants the most he can get and do the least to get it.

Clock-watchers have given us and the term a bad rap because we all do it in contexts that don’t reflect that at all. Time is critical. In medicine or health it’s the difference between life and death. It’s what measures your benefits and relative security on your job and certainly retirement. It’s how you use it that defines who and what you are.

In the old House of Representatives building there was a clock up on the wall – certainly to measure the length of hot winded politicians. BUT, that clock sat in a statue of a chariot driven by the goddess Cleo – the goddess of history. In her hands was a book. Every time a congressman looked at the clock he was reminded of the bigger dimension of that moment; that it wasn’t about himself. He was just a part of a bigger story and he had obligations. There was honor that checked self absorption. And, if he didn’t want to pay the cost he wasn’t fit for duty. Today, as the historian David McCullough writes, congress looks up and all they see are cameras. Perhaps it’s significant that Congress no longer meets in that room – it’s been relegated to some other function.

That speaks more loudly than words about how things have changed. Today, it’s all about NOW and whose group gets the power. It’s at best only remotely connected to the past and there is no sense of a bigger picture. Put that against a general dumbing down of both our language and history (the principle vehicle of culture – whatever that’s going to be) and you and the story is up for grabs. It was Jefferson who said any generation that expects to be ignorant and free never was and never can be.

You and I only live in the present but it’s how we are connected to the bigger picture – the story – that determines what we are going to be in the future. If anybody who gets power can rewrite the script the end of the story may well be different than what the author or authors had in mind.

If that’s true of politics then it is even more the case for our beliefs, our core values, our faith. There is another book and it sits not in the hands of the goddess of history. It’s pictured in the hands of God – the God who writes in permanent ink. Both Judaism and Christianity place it smack dab in the context of how we live. One at Yom Kippur and the other at end time. Both focus on where you fit in and how you did that. Not by accident both call it the book of life.

The next time you look at your clock, what is it really telling you? Stay safe and you have been prayed for.