In the suspended time of kairos, an entire day passes in the moment it takes Traveling Man to take a sip of black coffee. Thinking about the chronos time by which he has lived his life, he knows something deeper runs below the surface.

TRAVELING MAN: The clock is a man-made idea, clever, necessary, entirely artificial. It is our Frankenstein; we have created it, but it tyrannizes us, nevertheless. We all know it. The Greeks named a god after this kind of time: CHRONOS.

Father time. A father who eats his children. When something potent—like love, or suffering—fractures your life, the clock can’t bear the weight of you anymore. Like Alice through the looking glass, you are catapulted into living, breathing, kairos. The Greeks had a name for that too: Grace time.

With this thought, Traveling Man steps away from the café table, and into the next life, quick as that. Just as it can happen to anybody.

The ancients celebrated kairos by stopping eight times a day to remember God. These hours, each with its own personality, were meant to reflect the multileveled character of That Which Is Ultimate. [more]