Keeping Time 

While January 1 marks the beginning of the calendar year, and July 1 is the beginning of the fiscal year, and the first Sunday of Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year, Labor Day marks the end of summer and the beginning of another school year. I imagine that for most parents these days are bittersweet. While there is a definite feeling that it’s time to get back into the routine of the school year, there is also a certain pang of the heart to see little ones getting bigger, and big ones getting bigger still, and feeling like something special and underappreciated has been lost forever. 

I recently read an article by Michael Hanby, a professor at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, in which he writes about his favorite play, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The play takes place between 1901 and 1913 in a fictional small town in New Hampshire called Grover’s Corners. The subject is the everyday life of the townspeople, including the Webb and the Gibbs families. In the second act, teenagers Emily Webb and George Gibbs discover their mutual love for each other over a shared ice cream soda, and plan to stay in Grover’s Corners, marry and raise a family together. The third act opens nine years later, in the town cemetery. There, the townsfolk have gathered – both living and dead – for the burial of Emily Webb, who has died giving birth to her and George’s second child. During the service, the deceased members of the community call out to Emily to join them. But Emily asks for the chance to go back and relive just one day, her twelfth birthday. Her wish is granted. And, Hanby writes, “the weight and beauty of this ordinary moment, previously shielded from her by ignorance and finitude, nearly crushes her.” Having died, Emily looks at the experience of life differently. Even the most ordinary and mundane things strike her as wondrous, but those who are living in the experience don’t see it. “As everyone in the house is rushing to get ready for school, she pleads with her harried mother to stop and really look at her.  She mourns the coming loss of her mother’s youthful beauty and the swift passage of so much wasted time.” It is a painful experience for Emily, who finds that she “can’t look at everything hard enough.” It’s painful for the audience as well, to be shaken out of our ordinary perspective and for a moment see how fleeting life is and how much of it is misspent and “gotten through and over with.” Filled with sadness, Emily asks the Stage Manager, “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it… every, every minute?”  “No,” he replies, “saints and poets, maybe.” 

Wilder’s play presents challenging questions about life and offers no easy solutions. But Hanby suggests that Wilder tips his hand when a character reads the envelope of a letter addressed to one of the townspeople. The address reads: “Grover’s Corners, Sutton County New Hampshire, the United States of America, Continent of North America, Western Hemisphere, the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe, the Mind of God.” The Mind of God. When it is forgotten, everything is reduced to the temporal and the horizontal. The relentless passage of time makes life tragic. But in the Mind of God, which offers a kind of “bird’s-eye view,” all is held in an eternal moment, a never-ending present which can be looked upon in peace with Him forever. One sees the whole story of everything in a glance and His mercy allows it to be a source of wonder and gratitude for the blessed, but regret and bitterness for those who would remain apart from Him.  

Hanby describes Wilder’s masterpiece as “prophetic realism,” that helps us to see the deep reality of things normally hidden from our eyes. Though we cannot keep time from passing or (for now) comprehend the full meaning of our lives, we give thanks for the time we’re given, and for those with whom we share this gift of time. And we pray that we might one day relive the blessings of the gift that we are to each other in the glory of the Mind of the Giver.

posted 9/2/23