Take a seat by the fire for a moment.
Let us talk about Time.
Not simply the time measured by clocks and calendars, but another kind of time—the kind that seems to move beneath the visible structure of our lives.
The ancient Greeks gave us two useful ways of thinking about time:
Chronos and Kairos.
Chronos is the time we measure.
Minutes.
Hours.
Years.
Birthdays.
Appointments.
Work schedules.
The visible progression of one event following another.
Chronos gives structure to physical life.
But structure by itself can sometimes become hollow if we lose the inner spark that gives our days meaning.
Kairos is different.
Kairos is not so easily measured.
It is the moment between the seconds.
The stillness between breaths.
The unexpected opening in which something suddenly makes sense.
The song that brings tears to our eyes.
The moment in nature when time seems to disappear.
The instant when information becomes understanding.
Kairos is the quality of the moment rather than its length.
Chronos asks:
How much time do I have?
Kairos asks:
How fully am I alive within the time I have?
Living Between Two Kinds of Time
We often think about longevity primarily in terms of keeping the physical body functioning for as many years as possible.
Of course caring for the body matters.
But perhaps there is another dimension to longevity.
Not simply:
How many years will I live?
But:
How much Life will I experience within those years?
How much joy?
How much love?
How much awareness?
How deeply will I inhabit the moments I have been given?
Chronos measures the life.
Kairos reveals its meaning.
For me, Kairos belongs to the stillness.
It is connected with Presence.
It is that place in which we are no longer constantly asking what time it is or what must happen next.
We simply are.
And perhaps we need both.
We live in physical bodies upon an Earth where clocks, seasons, appointments, responsibilities, and aging matter.
Chronos helps us function within that world.
Kairos helps us remember why we are here.
Aging and the Meaning of Time
As we enter what are often called the golden years, our relationship with time changes.
For many people, the years once filled with work, raising children, building homes, and meeting responsibilities begin to open.
We may technically have more unstructured time.
Yet strangely, time can seem to pass even more quickly.
And another question begins to arise:
What now?
Death also becomes less abstract.
Even people who gave little thought to spiritual questions earlier in life may begin asking:
What happens when this physical life ends?
Is there something beyond it?
Have I lived well?
Am I prepared for whatever comes next?
Recently, as I shared, I had been feeling guidance from Isis after asking what the next stage of my own life might be.
One of the understandings that came to me was that much of my life has been preparing me for this age.
That reminded me of the traditional three stages of womanhood:
Maiden. Mother. Crone.
I have never particularly loved the modern feeling attached to the word crone.
I prefer:
Wise Woman.
Maiden, Mother, Wise Woman
The Maiden is young.
She is discovering life.
Possibilities seem endless.
She explores.
She hopes.
She dreams.
She begins discovering who she might become.
Then comes the Mother stage—not necessarily only through having children, but through the years when much of our energy is directed toward building, nurturing, creating, serving, protecting, and caring for others.
We create homes.
Families.
Careers.
Communities.
Responsibilities.
Much of our identity can become entwined with what others need from us.
And then one day something changes.
The children grow.
Work changes or ends.
The responsibilities that once filled every hour no longer occupy the same space.
We may suddenly find ourselves asking:
Who am I when no one needs me in quite the same way?
Where do I find value now?
What belongs to me?
What do I want to do with the time that remains?
This is where the Wise Woman can emerge.
Not as someone whose life is winding down.
But perhaps as someone finally able to gather the pieces of her life and understand what they have been teaching her.
The Mother gave much of herself outwardly.
The Wise Woman can begin bringing that wisdom inward and then offering it outward from a different place.
Not from obligation.
From Presence.
The Grandmothers by the Fire
I have written before of an inner experience in which I was taken by a Unicorn into what I perceived as a place Beyond Time.
There I saw women seated together around a fire.
The Grandmothers.
They were not rushing.
They were not trying to prove themselves.
They simply knew.
They held something through their Presence.
It felt as though they were tending a fire for humanity, keeping it alive until others were ready to come and take their own places around it.
That image has remained with me.
Perhaps this stage of life is not about becoming less important.
Perhaps it is about becoming quiet enough to recognize what we have actually learned.
And then keeping the fire burning.
The Instruction to Write
The guidance I received was simple:
Write.
Write the memories.
Write the stories.
Write the experiences.
I may never publish all of them.
Some may be only for me.
But by putting them into words, I may begin seeing patterns that I could not see while I was living through them.
I may discover how one choice prepared me for another.
How one disappointment redirected me.
How one relationship opened a doorway.
How one synchronicity pointed toward something I would not understand until years later.
Perhaps the story of our lives becomes clearer when we are no longer standing in the middle of every chapter.
So I began writing.
And then something interesting happened.
When the Pieces Begin Appearing
Yesterday I watched a paranormal-mystery video by Dougie Corrado discussing the story commonly called The Montauk Experiment”
I was interested because I had previously read books by Peter Moon dealing with the Philadelphia Experiment, Montauk, time, and related metaphysical accounts.
Whether one views these stories as literal history, speculative accounts, mythology, metaphysical material, or some mixture of those things is not the point I want to make here.
What mattered to me was the synchronicity.
The video appeared.
Then I went to the mailbox.
And there was Peter Moon’s newest book.
I began reading it this morning.
And what did I find?
He was looking backward through his own life.
His writing.
His spiritual journey.
His experiences.
The synchronicities and encounters that had moved him from one stage into another.
Suddenly I was not primarily interested in his stories about time experiments.
I was interested in his story about time.
His life had become a sequence of experiences that only later began revealing how they were connected.
And I immediately recognized what I had recently been encouraged to do myself.
Look back.
Write.
Remember.
Notice the pattern.
Stories of Time
The Philadelphia Experiment and Montauk stories have long included extraordinary claims about invisibility, altered states, time travel, unusual technology, and people perceiving or moving through different timelines.
I do not need to settle those claims here.
What matters for this writing is the metaphor they awakened in me.
What if our own lives are filled with overlapping moments whose meaning we cannot see while they are occurring?
We experience one event in Chronos.
Years later, another event occurs.
Then suddenly something connects them.
Kairos appears.
What once looked random takes on meaning.
The information becomes wisdom.
The event becomes a signpost.
And the past becomes present again—not because we have returned to it physically, but because we can finally understand what it was preparing us to see.
The Storyteller Looks Back
As I read about another writer reviewing his own path, dates, experiences, encounters, and synchronicities, I felt something within me say:
Yes. This is why you were told to write.
My own journey has also been intertwined with storytelling.
Not because I want people to follow me.
Not because I need everyone to believe what I believe.
But because stories can cause another person to remember something within themselves.
Sometimes someone else’s story does not give us an answer.
It gives us a question.
And the question opens a door.
That has happened to me many times.
A sentence.
A book.
A person.
A dream.
A chance encounter.
Something appears at exactly the moment I am capable of recognizing it.
And perhaps that is one way Chronos and Kairos meet.
Why Journaling Matters
I understand more deeply now why it is valuable to record the moments when something shifts within us.
Write down the insight.
Write down the dream.
Write down the question.
Write down the strange coincidence that made you stop and wonder.
Write down the moment when something you had known intellectually suddenly became something you understood.
That is often the difference between information and wisdom.
I have filled many notebooks throughout my life.
I have also left many behind during moves because they seemed like too much to carry.
At the time, I did not always recognize their value.
Now I understand.
They were markers along the path.
Perhaps we cannot keep everything.
But we can begin honoring the moments that change us.
When Chronos Meets Kairos
Chronos structures our physical lives.
Kairos gives meaning to the moments within them.
Chronos says:
This happened then.
Kairos says:
Now you understand why it mattered.
Chronos sees the sequence.
Kairos sees the pattern.
And perhaps synchronicity is sometimes what we experience when the pattern briefly becomes visible within the sequence.
A book arrives.
A person calls.
A forgotten memory returns.
A sentence appears.
A dream repeats.
Something we encountered twenty years ago suddenly becomes meaningful today.
We cannot always explain why.
But we can stop.
Become still.
Pay attention.
And ask:
What is this moment showing me?
Perhaps we do not need to chase synchronicities.
Perhaps we simply need to become quiet enough to recognize them when they arrive.
Around the Fire
And so this is where I find myself today.
Looking back.
Writing.
Remembering.
Gathering pieces that once seemed unrelated.
And perhaps stepping more consciously into the Wise Woman stage of my own journey.
Not because I have all the answers.
But because I finally have enough years behind me to begin recognizing some of the questions I have been answering all along.
Maybe that is part of the gift of aging.
Chronos gives us the years.
Kairos allows those years to become wisdom.
And eventually we find ourselves sitting beside the fire.
Not at the end of life.
But at another beginning.
Perhaps ready to tell a story.
Perhaps ready to listen.
Perhaps simply ready to keep the fire burning until someone else arrives.
I AM Becky Quinara
