Time Crystals and the Lord's Prayer

1250 words, 6 minute read

Plain, ordinary crystals, the Hope Diamond for example, consist of molecules arranged in a fixed pattern that repeats over and over again in space. What if we could do something similar with a pattern in time? Instead of a structure reproducing itself indefinitely in space, could we identify a process that reproduces itself indefinitely in time?

Frank Wilczek theorized the existence of such ‘Time Crystals’ in 2012; in 2016-2017 actual Time Crystals were created in a lab for the first time. In a Time Crystal patterns repeat over time in a regular cycle always returning to the same home position(s), over and over again. It's perpetual motion at the quantum level. 

But behavior in Wilczek’s Time Crystals is entirely deterministic and this turns out to be a huge limitation on the usefulness of his discovery. For example, the concept is useless for modeling indeterminate behavior, such as random sequence, probability, quantum decoherence, intentional agency, or free will – in other words for anything interesting.

Then, just ‘yesterday’ (October 14, 2025, Nature Physics) a team of scientists headed by Leo Joon Il Moon announced the discovery of a new state of matter they’re calling Rondeau Time Crystals (rondeau for the musical form called a ‘round’). These crystals are characterized by the presence of an indeterminate, chaotic (Delta) phase between two perfectly determined bookends (Alpha & Omega). 

Between Alpha and Omega, the Ginnungagap of Norse Mythology, Kaos prevails: “…the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” (Genesis 1: 2) 

However, this disorder is ‘tunable’, permitting local islands of virtual order to emerge within the chaotic Delta phase and endure for ‘short’ periods, subject always to the inexorable vicissitudes of entropy. We call such islands ‘entities, organisms, events’. 

The states of perfect order that bookend primordial chaos do not control the timing or the details of the ordered events. However, the Alpha and Omega points do embody certain essential organizing principles that work to ‘fine tune’ what comes in between, creating perhaps a bias toward Being rather than not-Being and therefore a bias toward Beauty, Truth and Justice, the ‘divine values’.

The World as we know it is a chaotic state, poised between two states of eternal perfection. Whatever happens in Delta must ultimately unite Omega with Alpha. 

The Lord’s Prayer (below) enjoys the same fundamental organizing plan as Moon’s Rondeau Crystals. It consists of three stanza, two timeless states of affairs, Alpha and Omega, and one spacetime, entopic, undetermined state, Delta. 

Let’s dive in:

Our father,

Who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name!

This is the Alpha State. It defines the initial position of the system: immanent father, transcendent God, holy (unique) name. It describes the situation from the first person perspective of the one who prays.

At the other end of the process of Being, the Omega State, the ultimate position of the system, is co-incident with the Alpha State but with its orientation reversed: 

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven!

This is the eschaton; it is God’s response. Essentially, he recognizes our initiatory act and promises to reciprocate by delivering the Kingdom of Heaven.

But it is a long way from Galilee, or Gotham, to God’s Kingdom. While the Alpha and Omega states are hard wired, how we get there from here, the Delta state, is entirely undetermined.   

Give us this day our daily bread, 

And forgive us our trespasses 

as we forgive those who trespass against us,

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil, Amen!

Jesus emphasizes three aspects of spatiotemporal life that are essential elements of the Alpha Omega Bridge Tunnel: Survival, Reproduction, and Independence. 

We begin with Survival, our daily bread. We pray, not for untold riches, but that our baseline needs may always be met, i.e. that we may live.

But ‘man (sic) does not live by bread alone’, or better stated, ‘human beings do not thrive in isolation’.  I thrive only in the context of community and community comes to be only when you and I grant each other ‘reck’ (recognition), i.e. when we forgive each other’s trespasses.

We grant reck when we sublimate our own interests to those of another. I ‘make space’ for you and, hopefully you make space for me and so, voila, community! But there’s a catch. The mutual granting of reck may not be transactional or reciprocal; it cannot be tit-for-tat. Each granting of reck must be a spontaneous, voluntary expression of love with no expectation of gain. 

The opposite of ‘reck’ is ‘trespass’. Instead of making room for you to emerge and grow, I impinge upon you, stunt your growth, and perhaps even abort your arrival. We ask God to overlook, to overcome, to forgive all such trespasses, i.e. all the times I suppress others’ coming to be. 

“As we forgive those who trespass against us.” God operates in the world through the world. God desires to forgive all sins; when we forgive, we operate in loco Dei.  We realize God’s eschatological objective in a concrete context.

“But lead us not into temptation.” Human beings cannot reach their full potential unless they are free. In that context, we have to oppose all forms of physical slavery. But such institutions are the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, we are all enslaved by something much more powerful than Pharaoh. Every day, we voluntarily indenture ourselves to a menagerie of inanimate objects: sex, drugs, wealth, status, adulation, fame, and power, just to name a few of life’s traps.  These become our idols, our gods, our matters of ‘ultimate concern’ (Tillich).

We are motivated by Good but we are tempted by the semblance of good. Seeking nothing but Good, we settle for what is not-so-good and when we treat the not-so-good as Good, we commit the sin of idolatry, the substitution of the relatively good for the absolutely Good. 

“But deliver us from evil.” In the Lord’s Prayer, evil assumes three forms: mortality (death itself, nihilism), selfishness (withholding reck, solipsism), and misplaced attachment (willful ignorance, idolatry). Consider the Ten Commandments. Each one prohibits at least one of these forms of evil; each one mandates the preservation of life (#5), the granting of reck (#1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8), and/or the shedding of unprofitable attachments (#6, 9, 10). Jesus was merely explicating what was already hard wired in Torah.

Sidebar: We don’t usually think of the Lord’s Prayer as a teaching on the nature of evil (sin) because Jesus was drawing on a much more sophisticated and nuanced understanding than most of us harbor today. We reserve the term ‘evil’ for a select class of wrong doers: drunk drivers, pedophiles, polluters, and internet scammers, e.g. Suffice to say, Jesus and his followers had a much broader view of the role of Evil in the World.

‘Deliver us from evil’ then is a summation of the three previous petitions (re death, selfishness, and attachment). It encapsulates the Delta phase but more than that, it instantiates the Alpha and Omega phases: ‘Thy will/done on earth/as in heaven’. Then Libera nos a malo becomes the meme sown into our flags for the personal and collective crusade against ‘the evil one’. 

The Lord’s Prayer is structured like a Rondeau Time Crystal. It describes a World with two perfect, eternal, wholly determined phases (Alpha and Omega) and one entirely indeterminate phase (Delta). In other words, it describes a Time Crystal.

***

The main dome of the Pammakaristos Church features a powerful mosaic of Christ Pantokrator, depicted gazing downward while blessing with his right hand and holding a closed Gospel book, symbolizing his authority as ruler of the universe. Created in the early 14th century during the Palaiologan period, the mosaic’s gold background and solemn expression emphasize Christ’s divine presence and theological centrality within the Byzantine worldview.