Sabbath Devotional :: The Time Being

Well, that’s that. As I write this, my parents are coordinating taking down the Christmas tree tomorrow. We will pack the decorations (at least, the ones my child didn’t break) in their boxes and carry them back to the attic to collect dust for the next eleven months. The leftovers will be reworked into lunches for at least the next week. My sister has returned to London. On Tuesday, we’ll fly home, and I’ll spend what’s left of the week madly typing a dissertation essay. And then we’re fully and truly back to real life, when everything is once again governed by the 8 AM and shoveling the driveway and school pick up and Newtonian physics and the scrubbing of the kitchen table.

The star and the manger are already fading into the unmitigated realities of the gas bill and a newly resolved workout routine. Perhaps we can squeeze in a few more carols at church today before December is completely gone, but already they feel a little stale. It is the week when Christmas time gives way to what W. H. Auden calls “the time being.” The meantime. The moment after joy when nothing is quite joyful, or quite miserable, and everything is suddenly quite grey.

In some ways, Auden reflects, the time being is the most painful time of all. There is no great tragedy to animate and sanctify all our daily strivings nor any great excitement to distract from them. Instead, there is only the task to be done.

And there ARE tasks to be done. As we come out of an election season that was particularly painful and divisive for so many of us, punctuated by a much needed reprieve by way of the Christchild and the pausing of hate time that Christmas so beautifully facilitates, there is a pile of work for us to attend to. There are children to raise, bridges to build, projects to develop, checklists to clear, ministries to visit, advocacy to engage.

And that work matters, sure enough, whether it is received by a hostile audience or (more often) by a bewildering silence that is neither for nor against you.

And I guess that’s what I’m actually driving at. In my various works, I have frequently felt inept, invisible, and insignificant. I have felt lonely, sometimes. I have felt this most keenly in the midst of the time being, when everything marches forward in a robotic monotony. But I have read, and I have come to believe, that God has promised to redeem this world and this people and this time — including the meantime. Even the time being will be redeemed from insignificance.

This work matters. Your work, whatever it is, however grey or unpalatable it feels this week, it matters. So carry on, sisters. Carry on into the bleakest midwinter weeks of January. There are brighter days ahead. And whatever they hold for us, they, too, will be redeemed.

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Sarah Perkins is the peaceful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.

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