"Donald Crosby’s latest book is an elegant philosophical essay on the nature of time as the ground of nature and value. Through accessible philosophical reflection and interdisciplinary engagement with physicists and cosmologists, Crosby argues that the flowing of time is real, irrepressible, and primordial, rather than illusory, cyclical, or contingent. Through phenomenological analysis and existential reflection, he shows how the unyielding surge of time is essential to understanding why our lives feel the way they do—why we care about anything, why we mourn and grieve. Finally, in a time of ecological emergency, in which we may be running out of time, Crosby’s book calls upon us to recognize the fierce timeliness of our responsibilities.”

Michael S. Hogue, author of American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World

This book is a profound meditation on death, not as the end of life, but in the primordial sense that each moment passes in time. The fruit of that meditation is a rich argument about what time really is—indeed, nothing is more real than time—and why time matters. This is a bold argument; in making it, Crosby challenges a long list of thinkers who have speculated about the nature of time, ranging from Augustine to Einstein. Affirming time’s primordial reality is the key both for determining what makes a human life worth living and for evaluating our contemporary ecological crisis. Readers will discover here the mature reflection of a distinguished religious naturalist whose work keeps getting even better with time!

Michael Raposa, Lehigh University