I’m continually searching for new and fascinating podcasts to listen to as I drive my Odyssey of Love. Podcasts by people who think outside the box. Live outside expectations. See beyond what we’ve generally been taught, whether intentionally or culturally.

This perception in thinking isn’t new to me; I was raised to read and question and educate myself.

When Chuck and I started our traveling days together, we let go, willingly, of our material possessions. A huge bit of it was donated to friends. What we kept, we’d go through each time we visited our storage unit. 

And what I found was that, as our pile of possessions grew smaller and smaller, I began looking inside of myself. 

Why did I believe what I did? Where did my absolutes come from? And were they serving me in my adult life?

A few years after Chuck’s death, I gave away everything left in our storage unit. 

Everything I own is in my car and in my trailer.

And, as I did when he was alive, I’ve gone inward to see what’s there and what does/doesn’t serve me any longer.

How can I further expand my heart and soul and mind?

For me, it’s a matter of survival.

I find it difficult to live in the world that was, and no longer is.

Through idle searching, I found a podcast, and episode, of Krista Tippett with Richard Rohr. He’s a Franciscan monk (I think that’s the proper term). Well educated, as they all are (or used to be). He’s older, more in my age group, with a nod to all of those who recognize the term post Vatican 2.

Part of the conversation was given to the meaning of Time, which is when I learned something I didn’t know about. Not language wise, in any case. I’ve experienced it but didn’t know that the Greeks named it centuries ago (Go, Greeks)!

Time. 

We mostly experience it and define it in Chronos. Which is time by the clock. By the seasons. Predictable time.

But there is another term for time that the Greeks recognized and tried to define, insasmuch as they could, what with being human and all. Knowing that there was something bigger than our experience of time.

Kairos.

Time again. But time expanded. Deep time. The moments of Chronos time. The moments of recognition. Contemplative time. Those infinitesimal seconds and beats of your heart.

This is how I live.

I haven’t yet figured out how practical it is, because our world demands Chronos. It almost feels defiant to live inside of Kairos.

Except that it pretty much comes easily to me. Chronos turns the world but my world, and my experience of time, changed drastically when Chuck died.

Richard Rohr spoke with Krista Tippet and I’m very loosely translating this to my perception about the before time that consists of so much order. As in, doing the shit we learned to do. The life trajectory that so many of us absorb

Grow up (albeit in a dysfunctional household), graduate/college/graduate/marry/kids/job/2 cars/picket fence etc.

Chuck and I never bought into that lifestyle, though we lived it outwardly as we raised our kids. 

We most definitely bucked it when we sold everything and chose to live on the road.

In many eyes, I went over the top, or possibly, over the edge, when I chose to live on the road alone, after he died.

But everything about life changed when he died. Time ceased to have any meaning for me, even as every moment was experienced in pain and grief and dislocation and disruption.

This time, the years of my life after Chuck’s death, this is the disorder that Richard Rohr spoke of. How I translate his words into my life.

And, to quote him again, it is my job to just get out of the way.

Again, nothing new to me, since beginning my Odyssey of Love.

I’ve always known that I’m not in charge of how this is going. I just need to suit up and show up and let it all unfold. Now I realize that I’ve just naturally been living in Kairos time.

Cue Don Williams, and change the lyrics…

It’s only when I get in my own way, when I revert to Chronos time, that shit gets messed up. 

It’s as if the Universe is trying to tell me Look, sister, back off, right? I’ve got this going on and happening and you’re trying to interfere. Just step back, right?

The Universe. Love. Some call it god. The Force. 

Whatever you call it, it’s the same thing.

As long as I let Love guide me, show me…as long as I live in Kairos time…it happens. I can’t explain it but my heart and soul know when I’m in it.

Chronos time is head space and it fucks with me and messes up the right stuff that’s going on. Chuck used to lightly tap me on the side of my head when he saw that I was getting into that space and say Snap out of it, Miller!

In a wierd and strange way, living in this disordered time is what keeps me open to possibilities. Open to Love. Giving and receiving. Which, you’d think, would fuck me up. But it doesn’t. It works.

Another piece of the puzzle that is my Odyssey of Love.

Now placed.

Thank you, Krista Tippet and Richard Rohr~