The Secret Behind “A Beautiful Year”: A Different Way to Tell Time

As we enter Advent each year, I am always struck by how the season slows us down, or at least asks us to slow down, long enough to notice the deeper rhythms humming beneath our days. This week on Day1, I had the joy of sitting down once again with my friend, the brilliant author and historian Dr. Diana Butler Bass, whose work has shaped the spiritual imagination of countless readers.

In Episode 4211, Diana invites us to look honestly at the calendar we live by, a calendar shaped not by the Christian story, but by the long shadow of the Roman Empire. And then she asks a great question:

What if Christians lived by a different calendar altogether?

In this short clip, Diana helps us rediscover the Christian year as an inheritance of Judaism, a sacred rhythm that tells a story not of militarism or empire, but of waiting, peace, light, forgiveness, and resurrection. Her insights feel especially resonant as we step into the holy season of Advent, a time when the world’s deadlines may press in around us, but the Christian calendar invites us into deeper wisdom.

To continue exploring sacred time, Diana’s newest book A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance is a wonderful place to linger.

Watch the Clip

Transcript

Dr. Diana Butler Bass
The way we think about the structure of our year is all based on Roman emperors, Roman celebrations, and Roman numerals. And so we have still with us today a calendar that is essentially a relic of the Roman Empire. And I roll with that at the beginning of the book, just the first chapter.

And talk about how so many people think we're a Christian nation, but isn't it a weird thing that a Christian nation would be shaped by a calendar that celebrates imperialism, militarism, and, essentially, economic superiority?

Rev. Dr. Katie Givens Kime
Superiority, yep. Subservience, yep.

Dr. Diana Butler Bass
Of the rich over the poor. And that's the way it's been for 2,000 years. Except there is another calendar that Christians embraced early on, and that is an inheritance, really, of Judaism.

And that's where we got this idea that there was this other kind of calendar that we could live in. It came from our Jewish roots. And so that's what I'm reclaiming: what does it mean in a time of imperialism, militarism, and hyper-capitalism, when that's what our calendar celebrates as our secular calendar? How do we, as a people, choose to live in relationship with time?

And is there a different story to tell about our days, rather than a story about loss?

So it has this kind of radical, wonderful edge to it about the days in which we live. But it doesn't just come out and hit you over the head with it; it's more like, what if we thought about things this way, rather than this way?

Rev. Dr. Katie Givens Kime
And how beautiful that could be.

Dr. Diana Butler Bass
Yes, and it is beautiful, because the Christian year doesn't tell a story of militarism, imperialism, and capitalism. It tells one of things like the mystery of waiting, peace on earth, the light of the world, of how do we deal with our own issues of sin, and how do we forgive even ourselves? What does resurrection mean? And so it tells this story that is just astonishing and, in a very real way, it's a completely topsy-turvy and very opposite story than the secular calendar in which we live.

Explore the Full Sermon

To go deeper into Diana’s powerful message, you can read or listen to her full sermon here:

Explore Dr. Diana Butler Bass’s full sermon from Episode 4211 >>>