You may have noticed our SpiritWalk column appearing sporadically in the past. For 2010, we plan to be more regular with this popular column. In fact, we have a stable of rotating authors from a variety of different spiritual backgrounds, and we hope to offer SpiritWalk to you every other Wednesday. This is the first for 2010, so look for the next one coming up on Jan. 20. And, as always, we welcome your feedback either in the form of a letter to the editor (which we call VoiceMail) or by commenting in the space provided at the end of this and every column.

Need a New Year’s resolution? How about taking time to breathe?

But first a question to us locals in the New River Valley: Does it really take 20 inches of snow or an ice storm knocking out electricity to slow us down? No? Yes? Either way you don’t need me to tell you we are too busy—especially not me.

After having to catch up after being off the grid for several days due to the snowstorm that led straight into the holidays, I have this precious perspective, which I may all too easily lose in the busy days ahead. It tells me there’s something wrong with how busy we all are. We owe it to ourselves to think about time; make the hours for us, not the other way around.

Those snow days left me with way too much time to think, specifically about before clocks were invented, and wondering if frustration was any different. I thought about an age before time was made of little pieces, of hours and minutes needing to be saved and accounted for. I thought about days when the past was a part of the present and individuals lived surrounded in their imagination, the change of the seasons, and being more preoccupied with life and death than with time. I pondered an era when we weren’t fixed to every minute of the day and night.
We live with a pervasive sense of urgency, pressed by technology and its mixed blessings of efficiency and speed. Racing from one appointment to the next, even scheduling time for meditation or church or yoga as if these activities were just another meeting. If we didn’t schedule them, would we take the time for them?
We just concluded Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s Day—each being holidays holding some fanciful notions about time. They lift us out of the usual order of the days and show us alternatives. They mark our calendars with an unofficial point of starting over, making us acutely aware that time is moving on.

We make resolutions about self-improvement and new commitments. According to custom, we get a clean slate, sort of. We make a clean break between the old year and the new one, which is still full of potential. In this way, we separate the past from the future and from one ritual moment comes the power for transformation. We have to act while the cycle is with us.
Whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, or New Year’s we expect holidays and religious rituals to teach us lessons about time and eternity, but all too often, these lessons are fleeting and forgettable. The hours win and the New Year just hurtles us forward that much faster. The hours win and the holidays make us busier than ever. The hours win and even our well-meaning attempts to slow down and do something spiritual devolve into one more meeting we’d rather skip.
Something tells us life shouldn’t have to be like that. Then again, something tells us life is like that if we want to be responsible, successful, even virtuous. A stretch of time without any obligations is a guilty pleasure, “borrowed time,” we tend to say: borrowed from the dwindling hours that remain. Not a comforting thought when everything we do reminds us of just how little time there is. If we want to make a difference, we’d better get busy.
But even better then that, if we want to make a difference, let’s just take a slow deep breath, and then make our New Year’s resolution to do nothing at all.
The Happiest of New Years to you!

Rev. Steven McClain is Pastor of the New River Valley Metaphysical Chapel in Radford.