Who keeps the time for your family? It may seem like an odd question, but take one look around, and you’ll find all kinds of available timekeepers: the government, Hollywood, Wall Street, the NFL or your favorite sport, and Silicon Valley, just to name a few. Or perhaps you allow the Church to keep time for your family?
 
Asking this question honestly is a powerful and quick way to put your finger on the heart of your Family Culture, Level 4 of your Trinity House, where you celebrate your family’s communion, which you received, deepened, and cared for in the previous three levels of your Trinity House. How we answer this question of timekeeping reveals a lot about what our families celebrate and value.
 
In a recent podcast interview about “social acceleration” and the seeming speeding up of time, theology professor Andrew Root suggests that there are three approaches to time—ranging from sacred/liturgical time to increasingly individualized views of time.  

• Intergenerational (Sacred/Liturgical) Time: In this understanding of time, we live with a keen understanding of and dialogue with those who have gone before us, especially Jesus Christ and the communion of saints. This is living immersed in sacred time. Given its “fullness,” it doesn’t make sense to accelerate sacred time; like the seasons and nature, it is to be savored, experienced, enjoyed.     

• Generational Time: In this narrower (and secular) understanding of time, we focus only on our own lifespan, disregarding God’s plan for humankind through salvation history. The focus is on you, your generation, your lifetime, and what you can accomplish.   

• Intragenerational Time: In this accelerated, individualized, and quite frankly, devastating view of time, we presume that we can live “multiple lives” in our lifetime. Our time horizon shrinks to just the next 5-10 years. With mobility, job transitions, divorce, and more, we can constantly uproot and reinvent ourselves and begin a “new life.”

To summarize, we live in an era of phenomenal acceleration when Silicon Valley has emerged as the preeminent timekeeper. Its algorithms, emergent technologies, AI, and assumption of “intragenerational” time are pushing our families to reinvent our lives faster and faster. Its “Attention Economy” meanwhile pursues our wallets, waking hours, imagination, and yes, even our souls.

Fast-forward…and where does this acceleration and forgetfulness of sacred time leave our families and our Family Culture? Busy, exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, over-committed and depressed. This is not editorializing. A cascading array of statistics and social science data attest to this fact.   
 
Our new liturgical year is less than two months old, and January’s resolution-season is still in the air. Why not resolve to strengthen your Family Culture, beginning with a bold move towards sacred, liturgical, intergenerational time(and yes, with corresponding moves away from secular, generational or intragenerational, Silicon Valley time).

To clarify, we’re not advocating for a Luddite approach; our culture and our livelihoods are suffused with technology. But that doesn’t mean we have to surrender sacred, liturgical time and allow Silicon Valley time to decimate our interior life of communion with God, the saints, and our families. 

Each family is unique and in its own season of maturing, but we invite you to consider one of these practical ways to move toward sacred or liturgical timein your Family Culture: 

• Introduce the liturgical calendar in your family prayer, meals, conversations, day-trips, and adventures.
• As a family, talk about the changing seasons and experience nature together on hikes, walks, gardening, yardwork, and outings. This ties you more closely to liturgical time and God’s creation.
• Establish healthy boundaries with technology (e.g., no phones at dinner; no phones alone in the kids’ bedrooms; or media-free Sundays).
• Detox from technology at various intervals—and immerse yourself in sacred-liturgical time every day in at least 10-15 minutes of prayer, every Sunday, and at regular intervals for mornings or evenings of reflection and spiritual retreats.

Level 4, Family Culture, is an access point—a doorway, threshold, portal—away from secular time and into sacred liturgical time, into your family’s celebration of the interpersonal communion of the Most Holy Trinity, into an experience of heaven in your home, and ultimately, into the beatific vision in eternity with Him.

And if that isn’t a great reason to check who’s keeping time for your family, we don’t know what is.