Fruit flies and time

Every now and then (and I mean every now and then), Josh shares something very wise, drawing on an obscure knowledge of ancient religious sects or training in pastoral counseling. Last time, it was Koine Greek applied to fruit flies.

We were having a pint (or the somewhat lacking American version of one) at the Cottage Bar in Grand Rapids on Saturday evening when a few bothersome fruit flies fluttered around my face. As I fruitlessly (sorry, couldn't resist) swatted in the general direction of their drunken flight paths, I was instantly transported to the perpetually-fruit-fly-full Tilley's, my "work pub" in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, chatting with coworkers, drinking British ale (probably Deuchars IPA), enjoying the well-worn Englishness of it all. But I wasn't there, I was here, in a smoke-filled American bar, a New Holland amber in hand. My eyes smarted with tears.

And that frustrated me. It has been three days shy of seven months since I left England, so why should it still illicit these emotions, for both myself and Josh, as I soon discovered?

Now comes the wisdom. Josh told me about the two words for "time" in ancient Greek, chronos and kairos. Chronos refers to time as it passes, minute by minute, day by day. Kairos refers to time as it feels, event to event, change to change. We may have left England some chronos ago, and we may have traveled the Mediterranean, driven from South Dakota to New York City, visited a state fair, a holiday fireworks display, and a nephew's saturday morning soccer match, but not a whole lot has happened to progress our lives further, to push us into the next big thing. Kairos is moving awfully slow for us.

With that in mind, I now hope that recent life changes and those predicted for the weeks to come (we'll tell you more about that soon... sorry to be so cyberly absent lately) will do something to replace the heartache for the things we've left or lost. "In times of transition / there is an irresistible urge to look back...", writes Julie Chen in an exquisite book I saw recently. I think (hope?) that such urges lessen as transition comes to fruition.