Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Isn’t this a fabulous vintage card?  I suspect it was meant as a New Year’s greeting given the clock, but it’s got a lot of other things going on as well.  Lucky four leaf clovers! And who can resist cherubs hanging rose garlands onto your year? I’ll take more of that please.

I woke up this morning with Chicago’s Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? playing in my head, and I thought how appropriate.

Nineteen days into the new calendar year and I find it safe to say what a curious time this has been.  Starting out the year with a Mercury retrograde has probably challenged many people in expected and unexpected ways, but you won’t find me bad-mouthing or fear-mongering this several-times-a-year cycle.  I happen to welcome Mercury retrogrades and get a tad annoyed that what’s found its way into popular consciousness these days is simply the idea we can blame this time for all computer, communication, and travel snafus.  To do so entirely misses the depth of the gift these times offer.  This three-week period is the perfect opportunity to review, to re-consider, to pause and clarify and refine.

I welcome these periodic breaks from the norm as much appreciated times to linger and be more slow.  Like everyone else I’m often affected by what seems like accelerated and compressed time accompanied with loud demands to be more, do more, juggle more.  That’s really not what I want, nor the stress that affects so many of our population as they try to match this ever-increasing speed of acceleration and compression we call daily life.  This always strikes me as a rather linear way to look at time.  While it can be helpful in some instances, I find it more useful to consider the rhythms of time in a more cyclical circular fashion.

Perhaps it’s because I think my rhythms have always been a little off-kilter with the norm, or perhaps it’s because I’ve actually spent so much of life trying to figure out my own rhythms and honor them, that I’ve always felt I had a special relationship with Time.  Not one that I necessarily believe I understand, and yet it feels important to me, as though it’s part of my work here to tease out the nuances; to invite others to engage a bit more fully; to be conscious and open and listening for how we dance with time.  And always trying to remember to invoke it as our abundant ally and resource; not some impersonal thing we’re fighting against.

Numerologically 2016 is considered a 9 year – the ending part of a cycle that invites us to wrap things up even as we begin opening the door to wondering and envisioning what’s next.  It’s also a 9 year for me on a personal level.

I think that explains a lot about why I’m feeling the need to look at all my old patterns and comfortable ways of doing things, and inviting in different things to try.  I’m looking at new ways to schedule my days and work; new tools to use, new practices.  Everything feels up for review.   So this starting the year with the extra support of a Mercury Retrograde feels a special blessing.

I love that even as I’m examining time and cycles and my place amidst them all, how often the topic has come up in various ways in the last few days.  Those synchronicities always delight me and I’ve come to think of them as cosmic breadcrumb trails.

• It was an underlying theme throughout the discussions in a meeting with a mastermind group I’m a member of.
• Satya Khan of Unfolded Note (if you don’t know her and her writing make sure to remedy that now!) talks about how she marks time in different ways in different worlds.
• Amy Palko invites the energy of a goddess in every week and this week it’s Mama Quilla the Incan moon goddess who gave us calendar time.
• But I think my favorite reference was finding this excerpt from Hafiz:

“This is the time

For you to deeply compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

 Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is sacred.”

Yes, definitely that’s the kind of time I want.   What about you?  How has your year started out?  How are you experiencing time?  What song is rolling around in your brain?  Do tell – you know I love to hear.