Every Now and Then

Kurt Vonnegut used to have a number of go to phrases.  One of them that was particularly prominent in his book "Slaughterhouse Five" was "So it goes."  Since I don't think he ever wrote a sentence that was absent irony, usually that phrase was tossed off as a response to some amazingly horrible event that had just happened to one of his characters.

Vonnegut is my favorite author on the subject of funny.  He was often (mis)labeled a science fiction author, as he often included extraterrestrial beings in his stories.  His favorite invented alien beings were the Tralfamadorians.  Tralfamadorians were not located in time the same way we are.  At any particular moment they would un-stick in time and wind up at some other particular moment.  Here's how he explained it in "Slaughterhouse Five" in the words of his lead character, Billy Pilgrim:

"When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"

Interestingly, Tralfamadorians would use exactly the same language when encountering a really great condition as well.  According to Kurt and the Tralfamadorians, when there's no such thing as waiting for the next thing to happen, everything starts to look vaguely similar and eternal.

I think that's true as far as it goes.  However, whether you're dealing with the eternity of "So it goes" or the stuck in the place in time perspective of  "Every Now and Then," you're still there...after all, wherever you go, there you are. 

You're going to have a reaction to everything you encounter.  If you return to the same location in space hoping to recapture a good time you might have had there once, you might be bored or disappointed with that particular location.  Still, boredom is a reaction.  Reactions can be good, as in our reaction to surprise party in our honor.  And reactions can be bad as in a scary medical diagnosis. 

Often, we don't let the word "reaction" hang around by itself.  We frequently stick a word in front of reaction and create the idea of "involuntary reaction."  When talking about someone getting bad news, we'll often ask out of concern, "How did he react?" That's because emotions don't have the same cause and effect that our knees do when someone taps them with a mallet.  However, unlike our knees we're pretty sure there will be a reaction.  We just don't know what it might be.  In turn, all of us will then react to the report of the reaction if not the reaction itself.

There is both beauty and pain in the "every now and then" of passing through time.  "Every now and then," we experience a sunset or a sunrise, a windfall or a look on a face or any number of other things that make us catch our breath or even tear up with joy.  Of course, "Every now and then" we have very similar physiological reactions to bad things that happen as well.  Since we move in a straight line through time, every now and then we experience the highs and lows that we use as building blocks to define our lives.

If we were meant for a living eternity, consider how this time spent living time in straight line time might teach us about how to live like a Tralfamadorian, or even a little beyond that.  Since eternity is all they've ever known, Tralfamadorians have the reaction of "So it goes."  However, if there's one thing that living at an actual place in time teaches us, it's that every now and then something beautiful happens.

And what if the beautiful part of the "every now and then" of this world, through the work of one man, could be transformed and completed into a fulfilled eternity of "so it goes"?  I think we might call that heaven.

And even more, if we fully realized the value of the work of that one man (Jesus), if we really believed what he said about the Kingdom of God, maybe then we'd start to become a little un-stuck in time ourselves. Maybe we'd see past both our "here and nows" and our "every now and thens," and into a "so it goes" that is completed peace, fulfillment, transformation and joy. 

We might even go beyond calling that heaven.  We might call it the Kingdom of God. 

People have argued for two thousand years about whether the kingdom of heaven (or "Kingdom of God" - the New Testament uses the ideas pretty much interchangeably) is in the future or starts now.  I can't decide if we have these kinds of arguments because theologians want to be lawyers or lawyers want to be theologians or if both have become vocationally un-stuck.  All I can think to say about that is, so it goes.

I think when we decide to follow Christ, what really happens is that we become aware of a future that's much more beautiful and full than our now; this even extends to us being more beautiful and complete than we ever imagined.  This is a case where "then" is actually a lot better than "now." 

However, I think we also become a little un-stuck from our now.  Sometimes we get carried forward and backward and we see that the entire time we've been part of a beautiful and divine "so it goes" that's really more of a "And God said."  We call our images of the past memory, and our images of the future imagination or visions, but really when you're part of "And God said," they're all now...and then.  And so it goes, in peace, love, joy and completion in the creation that God long ago spoke for us.  Anybody feel like un-sticking a little?