Time, Twilight, & Eternity
Finding the Sacred in the Everyday
Thom Rock
Time, Twilight, and Eternity
Finding the Sacred in the Everyday
Copyright © 2017 Thom Rock. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1780-5
hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4278-3
ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4277-6
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/17/15
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The Qur’anic quotations contained herein are from the Saheeh International translation. Saheeh International, The Qur’an: English Meanings and Notes, Riyadh: Al-Muntada Al-Islami Trust, 2001–2011; Jeddah: Dar Abul-Qasim 1997–2001.
For Jim, always
and ever more
I am convinced there are hours of Nature, especially of the atmosphere, mornings and evenings, address’d to the soul.
—Walt Whitman
Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge.
—Psalm 19:2
‘Tis Miracle before Me—then—‘Tis Miracle behind—between.
—Emily Dickinson
A Twilight Litany
Painter of the blue-blown sky; Glory the heavens declare
Turner of night and day; Sacred threshold, school of prayer
Wild eye of the universe; Steadfast witness, always there
Reminder of mystery; Eternal flame, celestial flare
Not quite night and neither day; In-between beyond compare
Palace in time; Sabbath sky, cathedral of air
Planet-sustaining atmosphere; Jewel of the heavens, commonplace yet rare
Spiraling chime of time; Unending hymn, neither here nor there,
Whose verse is twilight and chorus the dawn
As you kindle the clouds, let your radiance light the lamp of my heart
That I may see
Open my eyes to unbidden beauty and everyday grace
Build your house of breath in me; may each breath I take remind me of eternity
And that I am here
I am here
May gratitude be always on my lips and in my heart
Let my thanks rise as incense
Every day
As your ancient light breaks open the horizon, let my prayers rise and fall
Wave upon wave
Until they break on still other shores
In the mystery of everyday rising and setting, set me free
Of my assumptions and presumptions—of darkness and light
That I may begin
(Again)
Acknowledgements
While twilight gave me a time in which I might pay attention to prayer in my life, I am profoundly grateful for a welcoming place and tradition in which to ground that practice. For me that place is the community of Saint Mark’s, Newport and the Episcopal Church in Vermont. The cadence and tempo of our prayer life together—from softly still and deeply reflective moments to exhilarating jazz evensong—played an important part in shaping not only this book but also continues to shape my heart.
One of the greatest charms of twilight is that it allows us to see certain bodies that appear to shine more brightly in that magic moment, although they are always present somewhere in the universe. In that light, I remember here with great fondness the late poet Jane Kenyan, though our orbits intersected only briefly. Decades after our first meeting, her kind encouragement to put pen to paper has remained with me—time travelling, as it were—and I have thought of her often as I wrote these pages or stood beneath the painted sky.
Amidst the firmament of people it takes to make a book, I would like to thank the constellation that is Wipf and Stock Publishers. I am especially grateful to Matthew Wimer, for his adept oversight of the project, and Brian Palmer for coordinating all the moving pieces with utmost professionalism and patience.
Lastly, I am profoundly thankful for my partner in life and in all things, without whom this book would never have seen the light of any day—and I would be truly in the dark. Jim, you are ever my Polaris: my true north and guiding star.
Sunrise, Sunset: An Overture
I cannot say exactly when sky-watching merged with my prayer life, only that at some point I began to find it difficult to separate my own rising to watch the sun rise quietly each dawn with my whispering a morning prayer, or my stopping to admire the spectacle of sunset and my pausing to give thanks in the dusky twilight. I’m certainly not the first to bend my knees in the gloaming, and hardly alone. For generations and cultures around the globe and across the ages, twilight has always been a sacred hour. Just as the sun gradually rises, so too have believers and seekers the world over.
Since the dawn of time there have always been sky-watchers. I should think there always will be. How could there not be? From the loveliness of an extraordinarily ordinary blue-sky day to the star-strewn night the heavens above have always fascinated us. And perhaps at no other time more so than those painted moments in between, when it isn’t quite yet night, nor is it day. It was in those marginal hours of dawn and dusk, the twice-daily edges of day becoming night becoming day again, that I first began to pay careful attention to prayer in my life and my life in prayer—and to consciously make space for it every day. And as I did, I began to see that not only do so many people from so many different traditions pray, but we all pray by the same rising and setting sun—and the edges of our religions are not as sharp and distinct as some would have us believe.
The Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible speaks often of prayer at fixed times, especially at the twilight moments of morning and evening. Dawn and dusk have long been considered holy by many Hindus. The Holy Qur’an states in lovely language that the faithful should pray and give praise at eventide: “in the late afternoon and when the day begins to decline . . .” and again “when ye rise in the morning” (The Qur’an, Sura ar-Rūm 30:17–18). And Jesus often sought out twilight as a time and place for prayer (Mark 1:35; 6:46;