How do you experience Change and Time ?
For me, Time, and the Passage of Time, and my life ticking along in that flow of time are always moving and moment to moment there is change. In my perception, most of the changes are slow, sometimes even regular or cyclical. In my life there are and have been sudden surprises, delights and disasters, but none derailed me. Change is a constant.
These last 10 years have felt different, the pace and impact of change feels daunting. It could be my age, I am well into my eighth decade, but I think it is the times.
Change
A project by Krista Tippett of On Being 1 has left me with a practice of hope and an evolving view of change. I admire Krista Tippett as a gifted listener who has deep conversations with fascinating people.
In her interview with the late Joanna Lacy,2 Krista references this portion of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke and shares that it guides her in times of great change.
“Quiet, friend, who has come so far.
Feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower,
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What’s it like, this intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.”3
“Back and forth in the change”--I feel that swing between my inner life of metaphor and intuition and the concrete outer world of tangible sensory perception and other points of view. At times I do feel like a ringing bell as my inner and outer lives cope with a major change.
I am most comfortable in that inner world and its fields of books and imagination. But I have learned ways to engage with the outer world too, especially when change is overwhelming me. These have become healing practices that help nurture hope:
immersion in the natural world with as many senses as possible
conversations with good listeners to help me slow the ringing
taking care to listen well myself and find connection with others
Change, especially a lot of change can be hard. It has been useful to look more deeply at how I have coped with change in my past. I realize that some of the unplanned ‘disasters’ in fact were catalysts for growth. I ended a long marriage with my first husband with divorce. In hindsight, I see both my inner and outer worlds led to healing from this disruptive change and I found a renewed peace. In the midst of all the changes, I couldn’t see that happening.
Time
In the same project, Krista interviews Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. In her indigenous traditions of time, Joy describes living in the ‘whole of time’, a concept not unlike Einstein’s expansion of the western concepts of time. 4
Krista offers a further way to expand our concepts of time, “The 200 Year Present”. This construct was first introduced by Elise Boulding, an activist for peace. She used the concept to illustrate how generations work in families and to gain a larger time perspective on social change. The canvas Krista describes creates a time span of life on Earth that you have literally touched and been touched by.
Think of the oldest person in your family who held you as a baby, for me that would be my Grandmother-Armenia
Her birth year is 1886.
Think of the youngest person in your family you held as a baby, for me that would be my granddaughter, Susanna Grace.
Her birth year is 2018 and her life expectancy will take her far beyond 2085.
My grandmother influenced my childhood through many small moments. She taught me to play cribbage, but would ding me a point if I didn’t let her cut the cards before dealing-it was the honorable way to do it. She told me stories of being a tall skinny Tomboy when she was my age-like me. She had a desk full of papers that no one was to touch, where I learned later she managed all of their financial affairs. There are other undefined ways her life and her experiences are part of mine, including raising my father.
My moments with Susanna will in turn influence her in unknown ways that could stretch into the 22nd century.
Looking at this larger span of time also offers a different way of looking at change in our lives, it ‘lengthens our days’ in the words of an old hymn.5 If I look at the changes in the world since 1885, I can see that it is hard to predict the impact of changes when they are happening. I don’t think my grandmother could imagine my life from her day to day perspective, or even her own, and I cannot imagine Susanna’s. Our imaginations are sometimes too limited to see the outcome of changes.
We are not at the beginning or the end, we are embedded in time. It doesn’t change the serious challenges, but it gives hope and imagination a more spacious place to inhabit. I have found myself learning to trust and accept that I can’t imagine all that is possible and to begin imagining what I would like to see in the future.
Tippett, Krista, “Hope, Imagination, and Remaking the World, a Journal for Pondering and Practicing”. Hope Portal.
Tippett, Krista, “Remembering Joanna Lacy, 1929-2025” OnBeing.substack.com
Rilke, Rainer Maria, “Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29”, Translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows from ‘A Year with Rilke. Daily Readings From the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke (2009).
Tippett, Krista, “Live in the Whole of Time, with Joy Harjo” OnBeing.substack.com
Herr, Amos, “I owe the Lord a Morning song” (1890)
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Thank you for this ultimately hopeful essay. It’s poignant, gentle, soothing, and helpful. I will re-read the Rilke today, and look into the Tippett reference. It gave me space to breathe, and tamed some fear.
Leslie, this is so beautiful. Shifting the way you're viewing time—from the continuum of your Grandmother to you and then to your Granddaughter—gives me a new perspective to see things. And with the passage of time, the possibility of change arrives, bringing hope with it.