The Present Once Upon A Time 

The influence of the sense, has in most men, overpowered the mind to the degree that the walls of time and space have come to look solid, real and insurmountable, and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are two modes of time: chronos, which is speaks of time as linear and historical, and kairos, which speaks of time as significant, or seasonal.  In his essay on the soul, Emerson writes, "The soul circumscribes all things .... (I)t contradicts all experience.... (I)t abolishes time and space.... Before the revelation of the soul, time, space and nature shrink away.  In common speech, we refer all things to time.... The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed (The Over-Soul, 1841)."

In speaking of time and space, Emerson echos the "spirituality" of ancient Celtic thought, a spirituality in which time is not a boundary, but rather boundless and liminal, allowing us to move beyond seemingly real and fixed limits.

Several years ago when I was the publisher of the Celtic journal, Brigit's Feast, I wrote an essay on the Celtic concept of time, which expands upon Emerson's thoughts on time and space. The essay is not a scientific treatise on time, but both a philosophical and spiritual piece that speaks to our current day time fixation.

The Present Once Upon A Time: The Celtic Understanding of Time 

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