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How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now
Many Christians are disconnected from the past or imagine they are "above" history, immune to it, as if self-starters from clean slates in every generation. They suffer from a lack of awareness of time and the effects of history--both personal and collective--and thus are naive about current issues and fixated on the end times.
Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that awakening to the spiritual significance of time is crucial for orienting faith in the 21st century. He encourages us to cultivate the spiritual discipline of memento tempori, a temporal awareness of the Spirit's presence--indebted to a past, oriented toward the future, and faithful in the present. To gain spiritual appreciation for our mortality. To synchronize our heart-clocks with the tempo of the Spirit, which changes in the different seasons of life. Integrating popular culture, biblical exposition, and meditation, Smith provides insights for pastoring, counseling, spiritual formation, politics, and public life.
Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that awakening to the spiritual significance of time is crucial for orienting faith in the 21st century. He encourages us to cultivate the spiritual discipline of memento tempori, a temporal awareness of the Spirit's presence--indebted to a past, oriented toward the future, and faithful in the present. To gain spiritual appreciation for our mortality. To synchronize our heart-clocks with the tempo of the Spirit, which changes in the different seasons of life. Integrating popular culture, biblical exposition, and meditation, Smith provides insights for pastoring, counseling, spiritual formation, politics, and public life.
7 pages, Audiobook
First published January 1, 2022
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4398 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 262 reviews
September 20, 2022
There are few contemporary authors that I will pick up just about anything they write. What Jamie Smith has done in How to Inhabit Time is truly phenomenal, demonstrating a really mature and fully orbed work. It is the most personal, and cross-disciplinary project I have read from him. Part memoir, part philosophy, part theology, part biblical studies, part counseling. Perhaps it is the genre breaking nature of the project that makes it so appealing. Personally, this was a profound resource for whole-life reflection. The when question is deeply personal, yet expansive and broad in application. Vocational counselors will especially benefit from the insights here. A read that reads you!
October 13, 2022
Summary: Framed as three meditations on Ecclesiastes, Smith wants us to pay attention to our presence in time as part of an embrace of our humanity.
James KA Smith has greatly influenced me over the years. Desiring the Kingdom helped me think about how culture forms us and how we need to pay attention to cultural formation as part of spiritual formation. Imagining the Kingdom oriented me toward spiritual formation as practice, not information acquisition. You Are What You Love I have read twice and can be thought of as a popular level combination of the first two Kingdom books. Still, it also gives language to how spiritual formation works, which I find helpful in my work as a spiritual director. The Fall of Interpretation was part of several books that helped me grapple with hermeneutics and epistemology. The primary thought of our finitude as a feature of our created humanity and not solely as a result of our sin has been significant. As I have said many times before, I am not reformed. Still, if I were to be, it would be because of books like Letters to a Young Calvinist, which presents reformed thought as fundamentally oriented around covenant instead of TULIP or election. Said another way, reformed theology is about ecclesiology more than soteriology. But really, it is a book about Christian maturity. This introduction is already too long, but there are more books of Smith's that I have read and influenced me, and I will keep reading him because his writing has so influenced me.
How to Inhabit Time is hard to describe. Like pretty much all of Smith's books, it is oriented toward spiritual formation. It is written at a more popular level than some of his books, but also still has a lot of discussion of philosophy. It is more memoir oriented and confessional than any of his other books. (I hope that Smith will write a fuller memoir or autobiography at some point. I know quite a bit of his story from reading his books, articles, interviews, and talks, but I think there is more.)
How to Inhabit Time wants to remind the reader that time is essential. Similar to the point of Fall of Interpretation, time is a marker of our created finitude. The fourth chapter about embracing the ephemeral may not make intuitive sense, but it makes experiential sense when you realize that all things will pass away. Accepting that all things will pass away reframes how we think of time and can free us from being bound by concerns of time and legacy.
Part of what I love about Smith is that while he is a philosopher, he isn't oriented toward philosophy for the sake of philosophy but toward philosophy as a way to think about spiritual formation and the limits of reason detached from practice in helping us to think about God and faith.
I did see complaints about discussions of history, race, and justice in a few other reviews in How to Inhabit Time. This is not a book on social justice broadly, but the negative comments prove his point that we can only see the present well if we understand it contextually within history. So many current political and social disagreements are rooted in having a different understanding of our history. That is not to say that all issues are differences in framing our history, but these are theological and philosophical issues, not just historical ones.
I picked up How to Inhabit Time as an audiobook because it was on sale for 1/3 of the price of the kindle book. I have several of Smith's books on audiobook. And I am always mixed on that as a choice. On the one hand, I pretty much always finish audiobooks. But, on the other hand, I know Smith's voice from listening to so many talks and interviews, and I wish he would narrate his books. Other people narrating when I know the voice of the narrator always grates at me. I almost always buy a print copy of his books because I want to highlight or reread the book.
Like many of Smith's books, this is a book that I think will benefit from a second (or third reading), not because it is a challenging read but because Smith is dealing with modes of thought, not just ideas. Modes of thought are not easily changed and require very slow and wide turns. It is more like turning a cargo ship than spinning on roller skates.
James KA Smith has greatly influenced me over the years. Desiring the Kingdom helped me think about how culture forms us and how we need to pay attention to cultural formation as part of spiritual formation. Imagining the Kingdom oriented me toward spiritual formation as practice, not information acquisition. You Are What You Love I have read twice and can be thought of as a popular level combination of the first two Kingdom books. Still, it also gives language to how spiritual formation works, which I find helpful in my work as a spiritual director. The Fall of Interpretation was part of several books that helped me grapple with hermeneutics and epistemology. The primary thought of our finitude as a feature of our created humanity and not solely as a result of our sin has been significant. As I have said many times before, I am not reformed. Still, if I were to be, it would be because of books like Letters to a Young Calvinist, which presents reformed thought as fundamentally oriented around covenant instead of TULIP or election. Said another way, reformed theology is about ecclesiology more than soteriology. But really, it is a book about Christian maturity. This introduction is already too long, but there are more books of Smith's that I have read and influenced me, and I will keep reading him because his writing has so influenced me.
How to Inhabit Time is hard to describe. Like pretty much all of Smith's books, it is oriented toward spiritual formation. It is written at a more popular level than some of his books, but also still has a lot of discussion of philosophy. It is more memoir oriented and confessional than any of his other books. (I hope that Smith will write a fuller memoir or autobiography at some point. I know quite a bit of his story from reading his books, articles, interviews, and talks, but I think there is more.)
How to Inhabit Time wants to remind the reader that time is essential. Similar to the point of Fall of Interpretation, time is a marker of our created finitude. The fourth chapter about embracing the ephemeral may not make intuitive sense, but it makes experiential sense when you realize that all things will pass away. Accepting that all things will pass away reframes how we think of time and can free us from being bound by concerns of time and legacy.
Part of what I love about Smith is that while he is a philosopher, he isn't oriented toward philosophy for the sake of philosophy but toward philosophy as a way to think about spiritual formation and the limits of reason detached from practice in helping us to think about God and faith.
I did see complaints about discussions of history, race, and justice in a few other reviews in How to Inhabit Time. This is not a book on social justice broadly, but the negative comments prove his point that we can only see the present well if we understand it contextually within history. So many current political and social disagreements are rooted in having a different understanding of our history. That is not to say that all issues are differences in framing our history, but these are theological and philosophical issues, not just historical ones.
I picked up How to Inhabit Time as an audiobook because it was on sale for 1/3 of the price of the kindle book. I have several of Smith's books on audiobook. And I am always mixed on that as a choice. On the one hand, I pretty much always finish audiobooks. But, on the other hand, I know Smith's voice from listening to so many talks and interviews, and I wish he would narrate his books. Other people narrating when I know the voice of the narrator always grates at me. I almost always buy a print copy of his books because I want to highlight or reread the book.
Like many of Smith's books, this is a book that I think will benefit from a second (or third reading), not because it is a challenging read but because Smith is dealing with modes of thought, not just ideas. Modes of thought are not easily changed and require very slow and wide turns. It is more like turning a cargo ship than spinning on roller skates.
May 23, 2025
May 23, 2025 (third read):
I came in with expectations, and my expectations were both met and exceeded in ways I did not anticipate, yet again. Can I give this 6 stars?
A particularly timely and well-suited book for a trip in the transition time between university and what comes afterwards...a great read to just sit and ponder at with in a café, or in a park looking out in the sunlight.
Seasonality and living in the now were still takeaways, but Smith's focus on our own personal as well as shared collective history stood out to me a lot more this time around. This was interesting too, as it mixed with what I was learning when visiting the Museum of Occupations in each of the Baltic countries.
Staying on the to-reread list!
----
Sep 10, 2023 update: read it again (no study though), and it was nice to read again. I think it is a book I will try to reread from time to time, since how one might absorb and view the content on time will change, well, with time. ;) Some quotes I liked during this read-through, particularly on seasonality and not living ahead of time:
“To embrace seasonality is to cultivate an availability to the moment, entrusting ourselves to the Lord of history and willing to live through the mystery that is time.”
“To be unhurried is a tangible discipline of hope.”
----
Feb 18, 2023 (first reading):
I need to read it again. Maybe I need to do a study of it. Maybe I’ll read it again and do a study of it!
Did I mention I need to read it again?
I came in with expectations, and my expectations were both met and exceeded in ways I did not anticipate, yet again. Can I give this 6 stars?
A particularly timely and well-suited book for a trip in the transition time between university and what comes afterwards...a great read to just sit and ponder at with in a café, or in a park looking out in the sunlight.
Seasonality and living in the now were still takeaways, but Smith's focus on our own personal as well as shared collective history stood out to me a lot more this time around. This was interesting too, as it mixed with what I was learning when visiting the Museum of Occupations in each of the Baltic countries.
Staying on the to-reread list!
----
Sep 10, 2023 update: read it again (no study though), and it was nice to read again. I think it is a book I will try to reread from time to time, since how one might absorb and view the content on time will change, well, with time. ;) Some quotes I liked during this read-through, particularly on seasonality and not living ahead of time:
“To embrace seasonality is to cultivate an availability to the moment, entrusting ourselves to the Lord of history and willing to live through the mystery that is time.”
“To be unhurried is a tangible discipline of hope.”
----
Feb 18, 2023 (first reading):
I need to read it again. Maybe I need to do a study of it. Maybe I’ll read it again and do a study of it!
Did I mention I need to read it again?
December 23, 2022
I've got to have two dozen quoted insights stored away from this relatively short book. If you are on the fence, given a few minutes to his pair of appearances with the Veritas Forum podcast, and I think you will be sold.
August 29, 2023
A solid exploration on the spiritual significance of time. I found the contents of the book quite refreshing as time is an abstract topic with tons of applications. It's something I kind of just live through, not thinking about too much.
The book provides a relatively sound perspective on time which I found difficult to accept but liberating once I did. Truths that I don't deal the best with, such as letting things go and living with hope as a Christian. Understanding this brought a lot of comfort to anxieties like guilt from the past or uncertainty of the future.
I did, however, find Smith's writing style a bit over-complicated with his vocabulary and sentences. It sometimes felt very unnecessary, just trying to sound smart or creative. It would also be interesting to explore time from God's perspective as someone who is above it all - the book mainly focuses on the human experience of time. I'd recommend the book to anyone looking to be more in tune with time and how the Spirit works through it. Be aware that it's more of a slow read that requires time to process.
The book provides a relatively sound perspective on time which I found difficult to accept but liberating once I did. Truths that I don't deal the best with, such as letting things go and living with hope as a Christian. Understanding this brought a lot of comfort to anxieties like guilt from the past or uncertainty of the future.
I did, however, find Smith's writing style a bit over-complicated with his vocabulary and sentences. It sometimes felt very unnecessary, just trying to sound smart or creative. It would also be interesting to explore time from God's perspective as someone who is above it all - the book mainly focuses on the human experience of time. I'd recommend the book to anyone looking to be more in tune with time and how the Spirit works through it. Be aware that it's more of a slow read that requires time to process.
October 24, 2023
4.2 Stars
"How to Inhabit Time" by James K.A. Smith is a wonderful theological and philosophical meditation on Christian's temporality. Smith muses over, more than explains, how Christians are meant to interact with time. Smith has written an encouraging book that is not really a theological tome. It's more a reminder to meditate on our God-given limitations in time. We are part of a history and story, placed in certain seasons and governed by the time we are placed in. Smith reminded me that Christian faithfulness is not overcoming our time limitations (time management) but embracing our temporality and worshipping the God who has created time. This is a great read!
"How to Inhabit Time" by James K.A. Smith is a wonderful theological and philosophical meditation on Christian's temporality. Smith muses over, more than explains, how Christians are meant to interact with time. Smith has written an encouraging book that is not really a theological tome. It's more a reminder to meditate on our God-given limitations in time. We are part of a history and story, placed in certain seasons and governed by the time we are placed in. Smith reminded me that Christian faithfulness is not overcoming our time limitations (time management) but embracing our temporality and worshipping the God who has created time. This is a great read!
August 24, 2023
I marked SO many passages in this, but my reason for 4 stars vs 5 is I wish there had been a bit more application points. The whole book was very philosophical and poetic, which left me feeling like the author made good points, but I’m not sure what to do with it.
April 10, 2023
I don’t say this lightly, but I can’t remember a book that I was so ready to be done with. I’m sure there have been others I was more ready to finish. I just can’t remember the last time I felt this way as I neared the end. This really should have been an article posted online. In that format, it would have been really fascinating and could offer no fewer insightful thoughts.
There are some profound gems hidden within the rock face of the pages. Smith has made me think about time differently and I think with more purpose (what it means to live and love in time). But his writing gets way too forced too often, using niche words where he should and could be simpler and clearer. It was not enjoyable reading.
He seemed much more comfortable in and around the ideas of creative, courageous, and cultural “thinkers”/philosophers than of Scripture and theology. His use of Scripture, which is limited, often felt awkward and far too influenced by the ideas of the “thinkers.” That is to say, philosophy controls his use of theology/doctrine.
Though at times he tries to guard against the statement I’m about to make, the overall tenor of his writing comes across more intrigued by the social and futural implications of what he likes to refer to as “the Christ event” than with Christ himself. This is a major loss.
I’ve underlined and marked a few quotable places to which I might return. Otherwise, this was a one and done book for me.
There are some profound gems hidden within the rock face of the pages. Smith has made me think about time differently and I think with more purpose (what it means to live and love in time). But his writing gets way too forced too often, using niche words where he should and could be simpler and clearer. It was not enjoyable reading.
He seemed much more comfortable in and around the ideas of creative, courageous, and cultural “thinkers”/philosophers than of Scripture and theology. His use of Scripture, which is limited, often felt awkward and far too influenced by the ideas of the “thinkers.” That is to say, philosophy controls his use of theology/doctrine.
Though at times he tries to guard against the statement I’m about to make, the overall tenor of his writing comes across more intrigued by the social and futural implications of what he likes to refer to as “the Christ event” than with Christ himself. This is a major loss.
I’ve underlined and marked a few quotable places to which I might return. Otherwise, this was a one and done book for me.
December 26, 2024
Second read of this and it will probably need a third. Beautiful and profound and a word in season for me.
"...the Lord of the star fields and Creator of the cosmos was attuned to the specificity and particularity of the histories we have endured in time... God...saw what I had lived through... what I had lost, what had been missing, what the locusts had eaten and left me bereft of."
"Grace isn't an undoing; it is an overcoming."
"...not all change is loss and not all loss is tragic..."
"...the Lord of the star fields and Creator of the cosmos was attuned to the specificity and particularity of the histories we have endured in time... God...saw what I had lived through... what I had lost, what had been missing, what the locusts had eaten and left me bereft of."
"Grace isn't an undoing; it is an overcoming."
"...not all change is loss and not all loss is tragic..."
November 4, 2023
Thoughtful exploration of how time influences us: our experiences, identity, decisions. He edges toward progressive Christianity, but still plays it mostly safe—isn’t extreme or pushy. I wish his language wasn’t always so loose and vague. Some good reminders. Lots to chew on.
December 17, 2022
3 Meditations on Time.
If you know Smith then it will come as no surprise to you that this book will make you think about something in a way that you never have before. Time now gets the attention he offered to habits and loves in the brilliant “You Are What You Love”. Those familiar with Smith will recognise the development of themes and ideas that you have encountered in embryonic form in other volumes from him. It almost feels as though he’s been thinking about this book for a while.
Smith invites us as Christians to consider “when” we are in time. Noticing that many of us exist as “nowhen” Christians who may think much about place but not enough about time. To do this Smith engages three passages of Ecclesiastes and explores how we see ourselves in history and how we look to the future.
Engaging with a broad range of dialogue partners “How to Inhabit Time” will undoubtedly make you think. How we grieve, mourn, experience shame and guilt are so often linked, the book shows, to a mislocation of ourselves in time. Not only this but our common attitude towards time is (as is often the case) that of it being something we must conquer and control (which only serves to dislocate us further from how time is actually happening).
A thread that then subtly tracks throughout the book is the need to consider the role of discernment more fully. Holding an attitude that time is something that is not to be controlled but rather discerned, Smith helpful locates various manners in which we struggle to discern and how we might do so better.
Unsurprisingly, but agreeably, the liturgies and calendar of the church are introduced as purposeful guides to a different way to inhabit time. Seemingly disjointed from our ordinary calendars, Smith reminds us that our calendars are as much (and newer) constructs as the calendars of the church - except our calendar and clock is rooted in the Christ event rather than the world’s current calendars and clocks which have more to do with Caesars and Trains than any deep awareness of history and the world.
Should you read this book. Yes. If you have the time! Nothing immediately springs to mind that I might suggest would be easier to engage with deeply on this particular subject as a Jesus follower. Grab a few friends and read it together. I think this would be a really good book club book.
However, I should mention two factors about the book that irritate me (a first for me when reading Smith). Firstly, the book tracks very randomly. It occasionally feels like a series of random ideas lacking a driving intention. This could of course be the art of talking about time or an intention to give the book a feel of being more a series of meditations than a argument or plot driven volume. But for me it just occasionally felt like it was a book written either quickly or distractedly. I mention it only because this is not typical, in my experience, of Smith, so probably a comment for those familiar with him. It’s particularly surprising because the theme feels like something Smith has been considering for a long time. Secondly is his use of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s work “Being and Time” is cited regularly and favourably. Heidegger is even referenced as being heavily influenced by 1 Thessalonians and other ideas of St Paul’s. Smith studied Heidegger heavily in the past, so it’s no surprise he appears here in a conversation around this subject. What surprises me is the complete silence to Heidegger’s membership in the Nazi party (1933 - 1945) and that many have found his work to be completely saturated with anti-semitism. For clarity, I don’t think we should simply ignore a philosophical giant like Heidegger, but to prevent his name appearing uncritically in pulpits, I wonder if popular level Christian books like this should have a pretty large disclaimer before citing him freely. Perhaps Smith expects all readers to google Heidegger, but even if they do, the reader will only find it surprising that Smith never thought to mention Heidegger’s problematic history.
A thread on Heidegger that helps show why I’m nervous about him: https://twitter.com/terry_renaud/stat...
If you know Smith then it will come as no surprise to you that this book will make you think about something in a way that you never have before. Time now gets the attention he offered to habits and loves in the brilliant “You Are What You Love”. Those familiar with Smith will recognise the development of themes and ideas that you have encountered in embryonic form in other volumes from him. It almost feels as though he’s been thinking about this book for a while.
Smith invites us as Christians to consider “when” we are in time. Noticing that many of us exist as “nowhen” Christians who may think much about place but not enough about time. To do this Smith engages three passages of Ecclesiastes and explores how we see ourselves in history and how we look to the future.
Engaging with a broad range of dialogue partners “How to Inhabit Time” will undoubtedly make you think. How we grieve, mourn, experience shame and guilt are so often linked, the book shows, to a mislocation of ourselves in time. Not only this but our common attitude towards time is (as is often the case) that of it being something we must conquer and control (which only serves to dislocate us further from how time is actually happening).
A thread that then subtly tracks throughout the book is the need to consider the role of discernment more fully. Holding an attitude that time is something that is not to be controlled but rather discerned, Smith helpful locates various manners in which we struggle to discern and how we might do so better.
Unsurprisingly, but agreeably, the liturgies and calendar of the church are introduced as purposeful guides to a different way to inhabit time. Seemingly disjointed from our ordinary calendars, Smith reminds us that our calendars are as much (and newer) constructs as the calendars of the church - except our calendar and clock is rooted in the Christ event rather than the world’s current calendars and clocks which have more to do with Caesars and Trains than any deep awareness of history and the world.
Should you read this book. Yes. If you have the time! Nothing immediately springs to mind that I might suggest would be easier to engage with deeply on this particular subject as a Jesus follower. Grab a few friends and read it together. I think this would be a really good book club book.
However, I should mention two factors about the book that irritate me (a first for me when reading Smith). Firstly, the book tracks very randomly. It occasionally feels like a series of random ideas lacking a driving intention. This could of course be the art of talking about time or an intention to give the book a feel of being more a series of meditations than a argument or plot driven volume. But for me it just occasionally felt like it was a book written either quickly or distractedly. I mention it only because this is not typical, in my experience, of Smith, so probably a comment for those familiar with him. It’s particularly surprising because the theme feels like something Smith has been considering for a long time. Secondly is his use of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger’s work “Being and Time” is cited regularly and favourably. Heidegger is even referenced as being heavily influenced by 1 Thessalonians and other ideas of St Paul’s. Smith studied Heidegger heavily in the past, so it’s no surprise he appears here in a conversation around this subject. What surprises me is the complete silence to Heidegger’s membership in the Nazi party (1933 - 1945) and that many have found his work to be completely saturated with anti-semitism. For clarity, I don’t think we should simply ignore a philosophical giant like Heidegger, but to prevent his name appearing uncritically in pulpits, I wonder if popular level Christian books like this should have a pretty large disclaimer before citing him freely. Perhaps Smith expects all readers to google Heidegger, but even if they do, the reader will only find it surprising that Smith never thought to mention Heidegger’s problematic history.
A thread on Heidegger that helps show why I’m nervous about him: https://twitter.com/terry_renaud/stat...
November 25, 2022
Why does James K.A. Smith always gotta make me cry? Between this, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, and an essay he wrote on depression, the dude just hits home. Something of the mix between existentialism, sorrow, philosophy, and the hunger/hope for the setting right of things just gets me. Maybe I'm just a prodigal too...
How to Inhabit Time is, in some ways, a beautifully written response to a Christianity that is detached from commitments to the world (ie. justice) and deals solely in absolutes. It is a call to a humanity and Christianity that is deeply embodied, contextual, present, hopeful, yet sober-minded. There is a way of being in the world that is committed to this present in this place with this history—a history that shapes what is possible for us—and yet accept the coming future as a gift.
I find myself desiring to reflect on how God's Spirit is at work in my own time, and to better understand when I find myself, both socially and personally. I want to be better attuned to God's work in the world. I want to remain hopeful in that day where we'll all be seated at the marriage supper of the Lamb—including that estranged familia of mine—recounting how we received our scars from one another. Maybe we won't be grateful for the scars, but we'll be grateful for how our scars have formed us into the people God wanted, and how they point to the Lamb who was slain.
History is God's arena of action.
How to Inhabit Time is, in some ways, a beautifully written response to a Christianity that is detached from commitments to the world (ie. justice) and deals solely in absolutes. It is a call to a humanity and Christianity that is deeply embodied, contextual, present, hopeful, yet sober-minded. There is a way of being in the world that is committed to this present in this place with this history—a history that shapes what is possible for us—and yet accept the coming future as a gift.
I find myself desiring to reflect on how God's Spirit is at work in my own time, and to better understand when I find myself, both socially and personally. I want to be better attuned to God's work in the world. I want to remain hopeful in that day where we'll all be seated at the marriage supper of the Lamb—including that estranged familia of mine—recounting how we received our scars from one another. Maybe we won't be grateful for the scars, but we'll be grateful for how our scars have formed us into the people God wanted, and how they point to the Lamb who was slain.
History is God's arena of action.
Read
November 6, 2022“Being a Christian, then, is not so much a matter of believing something about God as much as living in light of this event’s cascading effects on history. Christian faith is ongoing participation in the Christ-event which continues to rumble through human history. Christianity is less a what and more a how, a question of how to live given what has happened in Christ.”, p. 16
Read
December 5, 2024The quickest way to sum up How to Inhabit Time is, ironically, "a day late and a dollar short." Setting aside the self-conscious philosophizing, intellectual and artistic posturing, and performative support for anything avant-garde, this book is a failure in two ways:
1. It fails to follow its own principles.
"I am suggesting one of the most significant exercises of discernment we can undertake across our lives is to grasp our seasonal location." (128)
Smith encourages his readers to try, as much as they're able, to discern the season they are in and to respond accordingly (like he himself has so wisely learned to do!). Despite this, Smith has written a book that might have been a valuable meditation on social and cultural issues had it been published nearly a decade ago. Having been published today, it offers essentially no new or valuable insights into the historical moments he chooses to highlight. Instead, it comes across as a book written by someone who was only willing to say these things when he knew what the results would be.
2. It gives a bad name to philosophy and meditation.
"The aim of this book is to encourage a sort of recognition that is the fruit of contemplation....A word of encouragement before you enter: don't come so much to learn as to dwell....the point is to transform our attention to reality by reframing our focus." (xii-xv)
To hedge against the potential that his readers may walk away from his book having gained nothing, Smith emphasizes that his intention for his book isn't for his reader to learn but to dwell. He wants his readers to meditate and to shift their focus so they can understand their habitation of time better. Yet he fails to offer anything worth dwelling on, instead filling his pages with shallow prescriptions concerning current events and including so much philosophical inconsistency that he undoubtedly turns some readers off from philosophy entirely, while others are "tricked" into thinking he is a brilliant philosophical mind that they lacked the ability to understand.
1. It fails to follow its own principles.
"I am suggesting one of the most significant exercises of discernment we can undertake across our lives is to grasp our seasonal location." (128)
Smith encourages his readers to try, as much as they're able, to discern the season they are in and to respond accordingly (like he himself has so wisely learned to do!). Despite this, Smith has written a book that might have been a valuable meditation on social and cultural issues had it been published nearly a decade ago. Having been published today, it offers essentially no new or valuable insights into the historical moments he chooses to highlight. Instead, it comes across as a book written by someone who was only willing to say these things when he knew what the results would be.
2. It gives a bad name to philosophy and meditation.
"The aim of this book is to encourage a sort of recognition that is the fruit of contemplation....A word of encouragement before you enter: don't come so much to learn as to dwell....the point is to transform our attention to reality by reframing our focus." (xii-xv)
To hedge against the potential that his readers may walk away from his book having gained nothing, Smith emphasizes that his intention for his book isn't for his reader to learn but to dwell. He wants his readers to meditate and to shift their focus so they can understand their habitation of time better. Yet he fails to offer anything worth dwelling on, instead filling his pages with shallow prescriptions concerning current events and including so much philosophical inconsistency that he undoubtedly turns some readers off from philosophy entirely, while others are "tricked" into thinking he is a brilliant philosophical mind that they lacked the ability to understand.
June 5, 2023
How many books can I squeeze into my “top ten”? Smith is a brilliant, genre-straddling guide—his words are philosophical and practical, intellectually honest and hopeful, logical and poetic.
What does it mean to dwell in time? Being human includes accepting (and thriving within) the limitations of time and the contingencies of our particular histories.
And just one quote from near the end of the book:
“We will arrive in the kingdom of God carrying our stories” (173).
What does it mean to dwell in time? Being human includes accepting (and thriving within) the limitations of time and the contingencies of our particular histories.
And just one quote from near the end of the book:
“We will arrive in the kingdom of God carrying our stories” (173).
March 6, 2025
I really appreciate James KA Smith's contribution to the church at large and my life personally. "How to Inhabit Time" wrestles with the spiritual implications of time and challenges our implicit contemporary western assumptions. It's a thick book that probably won't draw as many readers as some of his other works, but it really deserves to be read widely. I was exhorted and encouraged by Smith's perspective.
For more book reviews see thebeehive.live.
For more book reviews see thebeehive.live.
May 28, 2023
Time is sacred. And we can only ever live in the now. How do we let the past inform us and the future enlighten us to live in the present fully?
Far from being a book on personal timekeeping, Smith packs a ton of wisdom into a short book to help us inhabit the sacredness of our finite lives.
My favorite part is Smith’s section on our limits. Only in our mortality do we feel the sacredness of life. The outworking of this, from how we live each day to how we choose the food we eat, is powerful.
I only listened to this book - which feels like a disservice as it’s jam-packed with wisdom and I know I didn’t savor or intake all of it. So I may have to read it physically later. But in the meantime, I’ll recommend it wholeheartedly.
P.S. James K.A. Smith is brilliant. If you haven’t read anything by him, read You Are What You Love first. I want to read everything by him.
Far from being a book on personal timekeeping, Smith packs a ton of wisdom into a short book to help us inhabit the sacredness of our finite lives.
My favorite part is Smith’s section on our limits. Only in our mortality do we feel the sacredness of life. The outworking of this, from how we live each day to how we choose the food we eat, is powerful.
I only listened to this book - which feels like a disservice as it’s jam-packed with wisdom and I know I didn’t savor or intake all of it. So I may have to read it physically later. But in the meantime, I’ll recommend it wholeheartedly.
P.S. James K.A. Smith is brilliant. If you haven’t read anything by him, read You Are What You Love first. I want to read everything by him.
April 21, 2023
I have been thinking about times impact on the church and this book does well at exploring this topic. For those who have spent time with Mr Russel, get read for great tradition flashbacks.
December 16, 2023
it was love at first chapter. philosophical, but not bloated. phenomenological, but not vulgar. an instant favorite and the perfect book for the end of the year
March 14, 2024
This will be a book I revisit, probably in a hard copy over an audio. It resonates with me in our current season of preparing to launch our oldest, in the strange melancholy that sometimes comes in middle age, in the temptation to despair when we compare our current times to what was or what we hoped would be, in the frantic pace that our culture seems to impose. It is a call to rest and trust and live faithfully in our seasons, to find God ever faithful and unchanging. I want to reread Mark Buchanan’s The Rest of God and then reread this, as they seem to speak to each other in my mind.
August 29, 2024
Wow, I loved this book. My first of James K.A. Smith, and I was so immensely blessed by it. Some would say it went on too long on the same point, but for me it felt more like a stroll in the park with a good friend. Talking about all things life, death, meaning and beauty. This book put into words for me things that I’ve felt deeply but never been able to articulate, and it used many pieces of works from other remarkable artists, thinkers and poets, creating a beautiful experience like studying a turning diamond. Truth was revealed, beauty and goodness was highlighted, and God was displayed more to me from this book.
December 16, 2022
Maybe 3.5 stars. I loved the idea and argument of the book. And when it was good…it was GOOD. The idea of understanding our history, the WHEN we are instead of WHERE we are, and living with a “holy impatience for the future to come. I think it’s worth the read because a Christian perspective of “time” is thought provoking!
But Smith’s writing is tough for my non-artistic brain. I kept wondering how many poets he could quote in one chapter!
But Smith’s writing is tough for my non-artistic brain. I kept wondering how many poets he could quote in one chapter!
December 30, 2024
Even though this work was less of a page turner than On the Road and You Are What You Love were for me, I’m always extremely grateful when I wrap up one of Smith’s works—especially when it concludes with this line: “God’s first and last word is love, no matter when we are.”
January 31, 2023
Was a bit doubtful going in, but this got better and richer throughout. Very timely read as someone about to graduate college
December 27, 2022
Is there anyone today writing with as beautiful prose as Jamie Smith?
There we some gems in here!
There we some gems in here!
June 4, 2023
This book is simultaneously a deep breath of fresh air and an ecclesiastical call toward a better and higher theology of time and our place in both time and history. My favorite Smith I’ve read and one that I think will sit with me for a long time
December 3, 2024
A few interesting but half baked (if even that) ideas, that could’ve been a blog post, surrounded by pretentious fluff and banal hot takes.
July 4, 2024
I enjoyed this book, but the bloated philosophical language was unnecessary. He could have made almost every point he made more simply.
November 5, 2022
This is a book about time and living in it. "Spiritual timekeeping is fundamentally a matter of awakening to our embeddedness in history and attending to our temporality- both individually and collectively." It is "discerning how time shapes us, as both history and future." "Knowing when we are can change everything."
This book is outstanding. Smith has a way with a sentence- this work is peppered with prose that is simple and succinct yet profound and powerful. So many phrases were like gut punches of insight, and their frequency left me reeling- but thankful. See a summary on my blog.
This book is outstanding. Smith has a way with a sentence- this work is peppered with prose that is simple and succinct yet profound and powerful. So many phrases were like gut punches of insight, and their frequency left me reeling- but thankful. See a summary on my blog.
December 3, 2022
I have read several of James K. A. Smith’s books and have enjoyed every one. For some reason he really speaks to me. On the Road with Saint Augustine and You Are What You Love are two of my all-time favorite books. Not surprisingly, this one, his most recent, is very worthwhile as well.
Smith reflects here on Time— how our past affects our present and future, but also how our future can reinterpret and redeem our past. How we should learn to appreciate the various “seasons” of our lives, and be aware how our brief time on earth is influenced by the Zeitgeist we are born into.
Now that I’ve learned how to copy and paste text into my phone using the camera, I was going to do a lazy review and just copy a bunch of quotes here. Unfortunately, it’s still a tedious pain to convert any italicized words in the GR app and Jamie seems to use a fair number of them, so this wasn’t nearly as straightforward as I first imagined it would be. I trust that I’ve used my time wisely:
“This book is intended as a wake-up call to the significance of your temporality, our temporality—awakening to the way history lives in you, the way we inhabit history and history inhabits us, and the way futurity pulls us and shapes us. It's not as simple as seeing the spiritual significance of your calendar but instead discerning the spiritual repercussions of a history that precedes you, lives in you, and shapes the future to which you are called.” (p 9)
“[S]piritual timekeeping is nourished by Jesus's promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time (John 16:13). This stands in contrast to what I'll call the "primitivism" of so much American Christianity. Primitivism is a curious view of history that sees God's presence limited to only key points in history. Most importantly, primitivist Christianities assume that the Spirit was present in the first century and then somehow absent and forgotten for the long intervening centuries until someone (usually the leader of their sect) rediscovered "the truth" in the nineteenth century, say, and spawned a "renewal" movement that "recovered" the original, primitive truth. Such primitivism writes off vast swaths of history as "Ichabod,” devoid of God's presence, because that history doesn't conform to their contemporary version of the original. In contrast, Jesus promises a dynamic work of the Spirit, who guides us into truth across time. This is the fundamental conviction of catholicity: the Spirit continues to guide and lead into the future, across history, still guiding, convicting, illuminating, and revealing, which is precisely why ongoing reform is necessary. The story is still unfolding. Listening to the Spirit is not an archaeological dig for some original deposit but rather an attunement to a God with us, still speaking, still surprising, still revealing.”(p 17-18)
“Taylor's concluding comment is dense but worth considering carefully: "There is a difference .... between a view which sees widespread willed social and political transformation as something to be done by those who would achieve regeneration and a view which sees the relevant social and political transformations as needing to be with discerned and hence accepted and lived in the right spirit." There's a difference between believing we are the ones we've been waiting for and realizing we are called to join the Spirit of God coursing through history.
“I don't think it's overstating it to say these two postures are the difference between hubris and grace. The former—the ‘something to be done’school—is a kind of historical Pelagianism that sees us as the primary actors concocting history by our actions; history will be a history of our accomplishments.
The latter is more like a historical Augustinianism, a graced temporality in which the Spirit is afoot and on the move and we, by grace, are invited to join and thereby both be transformed and be part of the unfolding transformation.” (p 44)
“To recognize a chunk of one's life as a season given over to child-rearing has a tempering effect on other obligations that should, in some sense, be liberating. I am reminded that I don't always have to do everything perfectly: right now, in this season, our focus is this one primal thing: to steward the lives of these vulnerable gifts into the flourishing image bearers God has entrusted to us. When you take your oldest to college, you'll start to feel the autumn of this season in the air and you'll wonder where it has gone. The season of parenting is that chunk of personal history where our children are the most proximate, embodied incarnation of the neighbor we are called to love—even if we are also called to love the neighbor who fell among thieves.” (p 130)
“We will learn to embrace seasonality only if we cultivate the gift of discernment. It is discernment that enables us to grasp what season we're in, what that season requires of us, and what we might need from it. To embrace seasonality is to cultivate an availability to the moment, entrusting ourselves to the Lord of history and willing to live through the mystery that is time.
This requires a special kind of patience that is a willingness to not judge a zig until we've lived through the zag, so to speak- to wait for the season to unfold before resenting what it's taken. Sometimes the gifts come at the end.” (p 134)
“But Augustine cautions him with an admonition that could shape an entire life: ‘We ought not to want to live ahead of time with only the saints and the righteous.’
This insight is at the heart of a practical eschatology and should be the shape of the Christian life. Christians are a futural people. Every day we pray for God's kingdom to come. But as long as we are praying it, it hasn't yet arrived, which means we are also a waiting people. There are significant dangers in trying to rush the kingdom, as if we could now live ‘with only the saints and the righteous.’” (p 148)
“We are most prone to absolutize the temporal when our ultimate conviction is that there is no eternity, no kingdom coming.
Hence a secularized society is apt to treat politics as everything, and hence treat political differences as if they were ultimate differences (my political opponent doesn't just disagree; he is evil). This betrays a stunted imagination that should not characterize Christians: while we are not indifferent, we know that justice will ultimately only arrive with the King. Even though it is precisely the vision of God's coming kingdom that motivates us to work for justice, recognizing our temporal location in the saeculum should temper our expectations and our relationship with those who disagree. This should also engender a Christian realism and the lost art of ‘faithful compromise.’” (p 162)
“But Advent is how we learn to wait: not in passive quietism, not in Pelagian activism, but in hopeful trust. The kingdom is something we await, not create. The practice of Advent patience pushes back on the Christian temptation to ‘live ahead of time.’ Advent patience refuses right-wing theonomies that would forget this waiting and try to install the kingdom by political machinations. But it equally pushes back on any progressive utopianism that imagines that the full arrival of justice could be achieved by our efforts at social amelioration. Both of these are practical postmillennialisms that assume that the arrival of the kingdom is up to us and hence something we should fight to impose. Both of these are failures to live into the realities of Christ the King and the waiting of Advent—not to mention the cross-shaped life of a people who image Christ.
The rhythms of the church's life together offer an opportunity to practice our way into this eschatological imagination in a way that shapes how we are sent.”
[…]
“Christian political participation should be bold but circumspect, tempered but hopeful, cross-shaped but kingdom bent. An eschatological life is one animated by the cadences of two hopeful exhortations: ‘Lift up your hearts’ and ‘Be not afraid.’” (p 164-165)
“But there's still something unique going on in this prayer from Kenya. This ‘gathering up’ of our history is a beautiful expression of spiritual timekeeping that is too often absent from individualist nowhen Christianities of the West in the age of late capitalism. Redemption, here, does not sweep away a past; rather, Christ's redemption gathers up the broken fragments and makes something of them. The God who saves is a mosaic artist who takes the broken fragments of our history and does a new thing: he creates a work of art in which that history is reframed, reconfigured, taken up, and reworked such that the mosaic could only be what it is with that history. The consummation of time is not the erasure of history. The end of all things is a ‘taking up,’ not a destruction. ‘Time was not made for death but for eternity.’" (p 173)
Smith reflects here on Time— how our past affects our present and future, but also how our future can reinterpret and redeem our past. How we should learn to appreciate the various “seasons” of our lives, and be aware how our brief time on earth is influenced by the Zeitgeist we are born into.
Now that I’ve learned how to copy and paste text into my phone using the camera, I was going to do a lazy review and just copy a bunch of quotes here. Unfortunately, it’s still a tedious pain to convert any italicized words in the GR app and Jamie seems to use a fair number of them, so this wasn’t nearly as straightforward as I first imagined it would be. I trust that I’ve used my time wisely:
“This book is intended as a wake-up call to the significance of your temporality, our temporality—awakening to the way history lives in you, the way we inhabit history and history inhabits us, and the way futurity pulls us and shapes us. It's not as simple as seeing the spiritual significance of your calendar but instead discerning the spiritual repercussions of a history that precedes you, lives in you, and shapes the future to which you are called.” (p 9)
“[S]piritual timekeeping is nourished by Jesus's promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time (John 16:13). This stands in contrast to what I'll call the "primitivism" of so much American Christianity. Primitivism is a curious view of history that sees God's presence limited to only key points in history. Most importantly, primitivist Christianities assume that the Spirit was present in the first century and then somehow absent and forgotten for the long intervening centuries until someone (usually the leader of their sect) rediscovered "the truth" in the nineteenth century, say, and spawned a "renewal" movement that "recovered" the original, primitive truth. Such primitivism writes off vast swaths of history as "Ichabod,” devoid of God's presence, because that history doesn't conform to their contemporary version of the original. In contrast, Jesus promises a dynamic work of the Spirit, who guides us into truth across time. This is the fundamental conviction of catholicity: the Spirit continues to guide and lead into the future, across history, still guiding, convicting, illuminating, and revealing, which is precisely why ongoing reform is necessary. The story is still unfolding. Listening to the Spirit is not an archaeological dig for some original deposit but rather an attunement to a God with us, still speaking, still surprising, still revealing.”(p 17-18)
“Taylor's concluding comment is dense but worth considering carefully: "There is a difference .... between a view which sees widespread willed social and political transformation as something to be done by those who would achieve regeneration and a view which sees the relevant social and political transformations as needing to be with discerned and hence accepted and lived in the right spirit." There's a difference between believing we are the ones we've been waiting for and realizing we are called to join the Spirit of God coursing through history.
“I don't think it's overstating it to say these two postures are the difference between hubris and grace. The former—the ‘something to be done’school—is a kind of historical Pelagianism that sees us as the primary actors concocting history by our actions; history will be a history of our accomplishments.
The latter is more like a historical Augustinianism, a graced temporality in which the Spirit is afoot and on the move and we, by grace, are invited to join and thereby both be transformed and be part of the unfolding transformation.” (p 44)
“To recognize a chunk of one's life as a season given over to child-rearing has a tempering effect on other obligations that should, in some sense, be liberating. I am reminded that I don't always have to do everything perfectly: right now, in this season, our focus is this one primal thing: to steward the lives of these vulnerable gifts into the flourishing image bearers God has entrusted to us. When you take your oldest to college, you'll start to feel the autumn of this season in the air and you'll wonder where it has gone. The season of parenting is that chunk of personal history where our children are the most proximate, embodied incarnation of the neighbor we are called to love—even if we are also called to love the neighbor who fell among thieves.” (p 130)
“We will learn to embrace seasonality only if we cultivate the gift of discernment. It is discernment that enables us to grasp what season we're in, what that season requires of us, and what we might need from it. To embrace seasonality is to cultivate an availability to the moment, entrusting ourselves to the Lord of history and willing to live through the mystery that is time.
This requires a special kind of patience that is a willingness to not judge a zig until we've lived through the zag, so to speak- to wait for the season to unfold before resenting what it's taken. Sometimes the gifts come at the end.” (p 134)
“But Augustine cautions him with an admonition that could shape an entire life: ‘We ought not to want to live ahead of time with only the saints and the righteous.’
This insight is at the heart of a practical eschatology and should be the shape of the Christian life. Christians are a futural people. Every day we pray for God's kingdom to come. But as long as we are praying it, it hasn't yet arrived, which means we are also a waiting people. There are significant dangers in trying to rush the kingdom, as if we could now live ‘with only the saints and the righteous.’” (p 148)
“We are most prone to absolutize the temporal when our ultimate conviction is that there is no eternity, no kingdom coming.
Hence a secularized society is apt to treat politics as everything, and hence treat political differences as if they were ultimate differences (my political opponent doesn't just disagree; he is evil). This betrays a stunted imagination that should not characterize Christians: while we are not indifferent, we know that justice will ultimately only arrive with the King. Even though it is precisely the vision of God's coming kingdom that motivates us to work for justice, recognizing our temporal location in the saeculum should temper our expectations and our relationship with those who disagree. This should also engender a Christian realism and the lost art of ‘faithful compromise.’” (p 162)
“But Advent is how we learn to wait: not in passive quietism, not in Pelagian activism, but in hopeful trust. The kingdom is something we await, not create. The practice of Advent patience pushes back on the Christian temptation to ‘live ahead of time.’ Advent patience refuses right-wing theonomies that would forget this waiting and try to install the kingdom by political machinations. But it equally pushes back on any progressive utopianism that imagines that the full arrival of justice could be achieved by our efforts at social amelioration. Both of these are practical postmillennialisms that assume that the arrival of the kingdom is up to us and hence something we should fight to impose. Both of these are failures to live into the realities of Christ the King and the waiting of Advent—not to mention the cross-shaped life of a people who image Christ.
The rhythms of the church's life together offer an opportunity to practice our way into this eschatological imagination in a way that shapes how we are sent.”
[…]
“Christian political participation should be bold but circumspect, tempered but hopeful, cross-shaped but kingdom bent. An eschatological life is one animated by the cadences of two hopeful exhortations: ‘Lift up your hearts’ and ‘Be not afraid.’” (p 164-165)
“But there's still something unique going on in this prayer from Kenya. This ‘gathering up’ of our history is a beautiful expression of spiritual timekeeping that is too often absent from individualist nowhen Christianities of the West in the age of late capitalism. Redemption, here, does not sweep away a past; rather, Christ's redemption gathers up the broken fragments and makes something of them. The God who saves is a mosaic artist who takes the broken fragments of our history and does a new thing: he creates a work of art in which that history is reframed, reconfigured, taken up, and reworked such that the mosaic could only be what it is with that history. The consummation of time is not the erasure of history. The end of all things is a ‘taking up,’ not a destruction. ‘Time was not made for death but for eternity.’" (p 173)
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