We human beings are aware of all sorts of time: the rising and setting of the sun, the regular phases of the moon, the seasons of the year and agricultural cycles, beating hearts, and flowing tides. Each marks the complexity of our ordinary day-to-day life. We are probably most conscious of the kinds of time that intimately affect us like our pulse, menstrual cycles, and sleeping patterns, but these rhythms are also traceable within, and often to, the larger cosmic cycles of recurrence. The succession of moments; patterns of repetition; and the accumulation, growth, and disintegration or death of people, objects, and institutions are built into the very structure of the world as we know it. ‘As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.’1 Beginnings and endings, with intermediate flourishing and waning, structure non-human as well as human existence.