Sometime in the years between listening to Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’ in the 1960s, and “Living Through These Times as a Soul,” Community Forum at A Tree of Light in July 2022, a bell went off, and I knew I was on timers.

I was used to setting my handy little kitchen timer for cooking. Putting something to the flame, the fire that melts or boils or bakes, changing the molecular structure of whatever is in the pot or cake pan or casserole dish. Because you have to time it, giving it just the right amount lest it burns or boils away. So a timer is set to ding a reminder.

The day I knew I had an inner timer too was the day I heard a dinging in my soul.

A marriage was ending and endings can be fraught with sadness. All the regret in the world makes no difference when you know change is necessary and unavoidable because you heard a ding signaling it was done. The marriage was done and we were done and time was up and it was time to move on. Yet somehow this ding removed the onus of personal failure, transforming it into something positive. My ‘free will’ was either to hold onto something that had already passed, or accept the turn in the road.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

If I’ve got a biological clock running my body, why not an inner timer set to vibrations? Rather than counting down the minutes, it would count down the degrees of alignment, telling me when I’m done like my kitchen timer tells me the eggs or the coffee or the pie is done.

It changed not only how I looked at the present, but the past too. Endings I’d regretted, times I’d left people behind or they’d left me behind looked different from the perspective of timers and time-frames. It was just time, that’s all. Their time, my time; it happens all the time. Time was the issue. But if I’m going to be timed, let it be the timing of the soul.

Just like cooking, I can be done. When the heat is on, as it is these days, the energy speeds up. Molecules move faster, change their pattern, become something else. Knowing I am on timers makes it easier to go with the change. Not wishing the light would speed up or slow down, or the bell would hurry and ring like it did at school when a period was over. Just listening, and being ready for the ding when it comes.

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

“A Tree of Light, A Sanctuary for the Soul,” holds bi-monthly soul meditations and a monthly sharing. http://atreeoflight.org/