The editor of L'Encyclopédie de L'Agora and well known newspaper chronicler and philosopher, analyses actuality through the looking glass of Belonging.
Beyond the precise measure of “clock time” which sweeps us away, fragmenting our lives and breaking our ties, there is the natural flow of real time. Real time unfolds like the seasons, like the vivid and variable wildflowers following each other in a succession of springs: first the crocus, then the cherry blossom, and later still, the iris. We identify with these seasons; we live them. They are the living ties that bind us to all of nature – the times we belong to, the times of belonging.
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Seasons of Life
Childhood has its games, adulthood its responsibilities; youth have their flame, the aged, their light. But our denial of nature and our desire to control it confuses us about the seasons of our lives. Rather than living each season fully, we jumble them together in bits and pieces, giving us childish 40-year-olds and 60-year-old teenagers! But we are never happy, because we are never...
Rythm
Rhythm is the beat of life, the tempo of the heart. Every living being has its own rhythm, an echo of the sun’s movement which brings rhythm to our days. Connecting with others requires harmonizing our rhythms. Some people eat very slowly, for example, due to poor co-ordination – so when we dine at their table, we must align ourselves with their rhythms. The machine, on the other hand, has...
Kairos
There are moments in our lives when we are open to hearing the truth that will save us, the word of love that will disarm us. Kairos is the gift that allows us to seize that moment. One instant too soon, one instant too late, and the words that could have helped become hurtful instead. So significant was kairos to the ancient Greeks that they turned it into a god, personified by a young man...
Rituals
A ritual is a repetition of the same thing – the same meal, the same ceremony, the same prayer, the same celebration – in a life that is constantly changing, slipping past us, becoming something else. It is ritual that makes time a “moving image of eternity”, as Plato put it: that gives time meaning, that makes it livable. Stamp out ritual and time becomes a river flowing toward the abyss...
Speed
We love the speed of machines. All around us, machines expedite the tedious, shorten the wait, and free up our time for other pursuits. And the less time things take, the happier we are. So, unsurprisingly, we wish to make life imitate machines by speeding up natural processes as well. Many busy women would love to shorten their pregnancies, for example. Since that’s impossible, some turn...
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The editor of L'Encyclopédie de L'Agora and well known newspaper chronicler and philosopher, analyses actuality through the looking glass of Belonging.Latest posts
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ONE in ten people in France lives in solitude and a quarter have only the most basic links to family or friends, a new report has revealed. The issue of solitude came up in 2003 after the...
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