There is an old Swedish fable that tells the story of a family that has been told to expect, at a certain hour, the arrival of someone whose presence will change their lives forever.  As the narrative moves along, the family waits and waits, glancing often at the clock, wondering if this person will really come.

     Then the hour comes.  But the person does not appear.  After thinking about this for a few moments, the father remarks, "The hour has come, but not the man."

     So is history, humanity's as well as our own.  How many times has an opportune moment arrived in the global narrative, a moment, a kairos, that could change life forever, and no one is there to seize it?  Oddly, we will never know.  We will never know because if we did, we would have stepped into it ourselves.  We rarely discern a transforming kairos until after it has happened.  All we do is try to keep moving forward.

     For instance, did Albert Einstein know that when he published his Theory of Relativity he was inaugurating a seminal moment in science?  Did Leonardo da Vinci know that when he developed the theory of perspective in art he was changing how we do painting?  Did Abraham know when he ventured forth from Haran into Canaan that he was unleashing a torrent of political machinations that endures to this day?  Did Buddha know that his ideas would transform thinking across enormous stretches of Asia?  Did Mary Woolstonecraft (mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein) know that her writings on female freedom would help birth the feminist movement of the nineteenth century?

     In this time, a time in which the world seems to be in a state of constant upheaval, we do well to look for the kairos.  We do well to look for what we don't think we'll see.