LOOK At the Picture of Your LIFE!---A Course in Miracles 17.4 part 2

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The cuckoo clock is a model of how our world works. It is a measure of time, set in a fancy box. 'Time' by itself has been rearranged to allow collective actions-the railroads needed to make schedules, banks needed fixed hours, etc…these social constructs led to a re-packaging of time. Noon is NOT when the sun is straight up, now it is more or less that, but the exact fix of noon was a decision by others. Time is an aspect of social engineering, like everything else. Nothing is organic. The cuckoo clock celebrates that phenomenon with little bells, whistles, wooden dwarves, and birds doing this or that on the hour and half hour. It is so ingenious, who can complain that it is marking our decision to participate in the soul-less death march determined by corporate needs. Who can look away when the little men march out from some automatic door and commence banging on little logs while frantic birds fly their coop and start their song, “Time to march, time to stop, time to worry, time to reset the hands on the clock…”. And why would anyone look away?-it is other-worldly, clever, fantastic.
Approaching retirement, my dad started looking at various fascinations to mark time. One of them was ‘clocks.’ He bought several of these kinetic wonders, one of which had ball bearings run through a Rube-Goldberg maze of chutes and drops, one ball for each hour. So at one o’clock you hear a whir, a flip, roll, and ‘clunk’ as the metal ball settled into a berth. There would be two of these at the next hour, 3 in-coming, etc…until, long story short, at eleven and twelve when everybody was asleep, there was the whir, flip and (count’em), ‘clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk’ long rollll and reset to begin a new day, a new cycle of mental marks on the cell wall, a mind taking lashes on the hour. The process was pretty interesting until about 6 o’clock or so. Beyond that we are Jesus, tied to the pillar, flogged by the Romans, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 times on the hour-50 temporal hash-lines in a brain not allowed to forget the thing it signed up for. Two nights of that and the pain was too great, even for Dad, so the gizmo went-away. The beauty of this clock was that “the frame” around time inflicted a bit of what the game is about at its root-life is irritating on the clock, we are slaves [on the clock]. We signed up to be slaves of time…”Wait just a darned minute there Ms Debbie Downer, I signed up fer no such thing. Throw the dam clock away!” And leave you with the content, slavery, your time is owned by others. TIME TO COMPARE PICTURES!
Greek words for time provide some truth-there is Kairos, or ‘clock time’ and Chronos, or ‘quality of the moment.’ These two overlap at all times. I am on my schedule (Chronos) and there is a felt sense of how this is experienced (Kairos). These are a window into the two pictures from the existential direction. Kairos equates with the picture presented by the Holy Spirit. It is a look inside. Abandon external metrics and find LIFE as a dynamic whirring in the heart, blood, brain, fingertips. We can say, Good,” or we can say, “Bad,” or we can say, “I don’t know-I don’t know who I am, what I am, or why I am here at all.” Not knowing is an invitation, TO FIND OUT. Not knowing is a good place to be. It is the unopened letter with no return address, hand-written, with a foreign stamp. But we don’t know anybody from out there. Yet, here it is-not knowing. Would I not peel it open? Can’t be for me-does not apply-good enough keeping it closed.---of course not. Yet that is a common response to not knowing. What if the letter is written in some script, Hindi, Thai, Russian-oh well, can’t crack that one----Are you kidding? No Way!---- You would get an interpreter. You’d figure it out one way or another as quickly as possible, ”Gotta know!”
Our Teacher holds out His hands and offers us two models--one is a version of this world of marking time, surrounded by gold watches, bennies, perks, and vacations. Mixed in are missed opportunities as collateral damage, misunderstandings as gaps in generations, pain and suffering, glimmering like jewels--the price of accomplishment. "Better to love and lose than never to have loved at all," is our poignant mantra on the life well-lived. The other hand holds nearly nothing. In fact as we examine the two, it seems to be a choice between 'something' and 'nothing.' Yet, impelled by some urge for simplicity, some spirit-wind we reach out for 'nothing' and find flesh. It is His hand, warm, welcoming. The fingers close around ours, and we are lifted-up. We immerse in a picture of us, so familiar, we are gone.