Years ago I read Tillich's collection of homilies titled, "The Eternal Now."  Influenced by Nitzche/Heidegger, as many were, Tillich's "kairos" time is to be compared and contrasted with ordinary, everyday "clock-time," the time of Chronos.  Tomorrow at Noon will be a certain "fulness of time."  Not THE Fulness of Time--that was the Incarnation.  Nonetheless, the Inauguration stands forever as a turning-point. An Eternal Now of the positive, healthy, hopeful and joyful variety.  Eternal Nows, however, if I recall my Tillich, can be downers as well.  No doubt there will be tragedy in the Obama Time just as surely as this moment-since-November Fourth has been Shakespearean Comedy.  In the Endtime, though, Dante's Divine Comedy wins out--if you believe it will.

The exaltation that we are feeling now could and will, eventually, turn to dust. 

 

But out of the ashes there will be yet a new birth of freedom and joy and bliss and glory.  So, enjoy the current feelings of exaltation.  They are real, not deceptive.  They promise an answer to the utlimate question of life, what is our purpose? 

 

Today, Barack was right and I was wrong.  I'd blogged, "No, We Won't."  That is, no, I won't serve in any soup kitchen.  But you know what?  I will serve.  I agree with Obama that there can now be "no idle hands."  We all have to rise to the occasion.  Some just by showing up at work; some by getting out of themselves enough to greet another human being; some by saying, "I owe you an apology..."; some by indeed going to the soup kitchens and the AA meetings and the habitats for bird watchers.  Service does not have to be "public service" which really doesn't count because you get a nice check and a nice retirement--no matter what the quality of your work or your concern, on the job, for others. 

 

The word, Service, boils down to the encounter with the Master.  This personal encounter, if it is real, eventuates in more or less Imitation of Christ.   Tillich, the womanizer that he was, understood this point only in part.  But who am I to judge?

 

This time of the Kairos of which Tillich allegedly spoke, this glorious or tragic Noon, awaits us all at death.  In the meantime, I suppose, we get glimpses of it.  Am I wrong or is not the time of Kairos, the time of a "special grace" or gift nothing more and nothing less than the "rumor of angels" that Peter Berger talked about?  Elvis on the radio.  Mozart.  A re-run of Bishop Sheen.  Mass and Communion after Confession/Reconciliation.  The Inauguration and all it means. 

 

Kairos as turning-point can also mean a nation's 9/11.  A country's civil war.  A tribe's genocide or holocaust.  The State of Israel happened after the horrible itself occurred.  And that story continues to go on and on.  Is Gaza some kind of turning point or potentially a Kairos for all parties involved?  There have been shadows there galore.  But also a kind of clarity seems to be in the offing.  And this clarity or noontime will obtain regardless of who "wins." 

 

Of course, Tillich meant much, much more than this by his concept of Eternal Now.  In the Christian context, leaving all secondary literature aside for a moment, the eternal stands for "the new heaven and the new earth."  Somehow, some way, eternity obtains in the here and now.  It brings a certain "newness."  It brings Change.  That cliche of this moment--change.  And yet I think Barack sees as few statesmen have the penetrating depths and breadth and heighth of this moment in time "that we have been waiting for."  His behavior, his public character, his words and deeds thus far--including perhaps his writings--all this seems to testify to Truth (notwithstanding some evidence to the contrary).  Some have called it deceit.  Then they were invited to dinner.  There was beauty in that invitation to conviviality.  And where there is Beauty, there is the prospect of Goodness and Truth.  Not to mention the Sublime.  These noble things are part and parcel, or ought to be part and parcel, of Tillich's insight into the Eternal Now--the meaning of the New Dispensation...for our time. 

 

It occurs to me just now that Martin Luther King, whose d.o.b. we celebrate today, his 80th, was familiar with Paul Tillich and then some.  I'll say no more tonight.  I want to be ready for tomorrow's Inauguration of our 44th President of the United States of America.  God bless Barack Obama and God Bless America and all Children of God everywhere.  All Citizens everywhere.  A special Thank You--to Reverend King, to Barack and Michelle.  And to the people of this now truly Great Country.  The Act of Aristotle's Potency has come to pass, and another Milestone in Salvation History has arisen for the waiting world to behold.  May the Milestones ahead redound to the spiritual and mental and physical benefit of all human beings and citizens both now and in the future to come.