John Scalzi was on a panel at ALA with Charlotte Jones, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything except Charlotte Jones is the granddaughter of Madeleine L’Engle who is one of my favorite authors and the wikipedia article on her divided up her Austin and Murry-O’Keefe books into Chonos (Austin) and Kairos (Murry-O’Keefe). Those two words both refer to time and I wanted to capture the idea of the two kinds of time here, as I have thought about them off and on for years.
Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the “right or opportune moment,” or “God’s time.” The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies “a time in between”, a moment of undetermined period of time in which “something” special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature.
This past weekend was the ultimate handfasting. Marcey is now official. It was an absolutely wonderful event and it’s true, being married really does change things.
In Greek mythology, Chronos (Χρόνος in Greek) in pre-Socratic philosophical works is said to be the personification of time. He emerged from the primordial Chaos.
