This Fall I got to see Mercury transit across our sun. Through several chubby telescopes, positioned on tripods in a field on campus, a cluster of the curious took turns. The planet was like a speck of pepper on a large egg yoke. Various scopes were set to filter the sun’s light energy so that the color of the gasses around the spherical giant reflected to the eye a different view of it: orange, red, yellow. But the movement of the dark speck did not vary. It moved in one direction. This vacant planet has a set course, slow but sure, creeping silently across the brilliant light behind it.

Mercury is near impossible to see in our skies because of its size and orbit, so this was a rare opportunity, which a knowledgeable friend had alerted me to. And, it struck me as I tried to absorb the significance, that various orbs are moving above us all the time, we just go about our business on earth hardly aware. Like gears in a vast cosmos above us, there is predictable movement. It’s a picture of time. And once we’ve passed through, that time is past, not repeatable.

This comforts me strangely. For time is a slow move. Time is time. Think of that: time means I have time. Its sure ticking gives opportunity to reflect as I breathe here, to consider, as John says in the book of Revelation “the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall take place.” We’re living in the already/not yet place of possibilities. But what is set is set. Can you hold that in?

I offer as illustration a small piece I did last year and gave as a Christmas gift. To me these big things are better caught than taught. I wish you relief from what is past and can now be put away. I wish you a growing confidence in what is set above you as we all move now into another decade of change. Happy New Year.