August 25th - Day 1 - Port Alberni to Ft. Langley, BC

It seems like I "should" be excited, or something. But I just feel peaceful. When I first decided to make this journey I felt scared, and like I should have my head examined. Then I got excited a few weeks ago. But now, it just feels "right"....this is where I belong.

On the ferry I read a little more of Albert Nolans' JESUS, before Christianity and it touched me again, as the book has been doing all along. In chapter 11, Nolan talks about our need to understand Jesus' and his contemporaries perception of time. In the western world, we think of time as a measurement recorded on clocks and calendars. We locate things, events, between two dates. For instance, the forest fires started on such and such a date, and were contained on this date, and finally extinquished on another date. Or, leaving Port Alberni at 9 a.m. I arrived at my campsite at 4:30 p.m., a journey of seven and a half hours.

According to Gerhard von Rad, quoted by Nolan, this concept was unknown to the Hebrews of Jesus time. They spoke and thought of time as a "quality". One example is in Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything, a time for every affair under the heavens:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to uproot;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to tear down, and a time to build;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them;

a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to be silent and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time of war, and a time of peace.

For the Hebrew, to know the time was not a matter of knowing the date, it was about knowing what kind of time it might be. Was it a time for tears or a time for laughter? Time was the quality, or mood of events.

Driving through the farmland enroute to Ft. Langley it is definitely the time for corn, and berries. And it is the time for this pilgrimage, entered into with thoughtfulness, peace, and awareness.

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