I’ve been reading Peter Leithart on the subject of time, first (as I reported in my previous column) in his just-published book
Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1
and now in a book issued earlier this year,
I Respond, Though I Shall Be Changed: Essays on the Thought of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
. A passage in the latter (for no obvious reason except for the governing subject) suddenly brought to mind a memory I can’t date with precision: the first occasion when, during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I felt a sense of awe at the thought that one “year” was about to end and a new one was about to begin. I would guess that I was about five years old at the time, but that’s not important. Over the decades since then (I turned 75 in June), I’ve often felt that emotion during the last week of this or that year.