Every day, the local TV channel fills a few seconds in its parade of commercials with a speeded-up panorama of downtown Kelowna. Clouds skid by, showers form, daylight darkens into night. On the highway through town, headlights blend into a fluid stream that ebbs and flows like waves on a shore.
When we’re in that stream, we see only the immediate moment. Traffic either hurtles onward, or it goes nowhere.
That’s because we live in the “now”. We know there’s a past, through which we have come. We know there’s a future, which will probably arrive sooner than we want. But generally, we’re aware only of this moment in time.
Walking down main street, we do not see it as it once was, when clapboard storefronts rose out of a river of mud, any more than we can see what it will look like a century from now.
The charm of historic sites -- like Barkerville or Vernon’s O’Keefe Ranch -- is that they let us see now, what was then.
The irresistible force
Time can’t be stopped, paused, or rewound. No flood, landslide, or lava flow is as irresistible as time.
Except when technology compresses the flow of time. Photographs capture frozen images of the past. Speeded-up video lets us watch time itself unrolling.
Perhaps that’s why we celebrate annual events like New Year’s Day. If it weren’t for the calendar, New Year’s Day would be no different from any other day. Other than being about three seconds longer than the day before.
But it’s not the same day as it was 365 days ago. Babies have been born, children married, sicknesses coped with, friends buried. Relationships have changed.
Birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions, are a time to separate ourselves, for a moment, from the inexorable flow of time. To shed a tear for a loved one, perhaps. To mark a growing child’s height on a kitchen wall. To hug an old friend at a party.
Sometimes we don’t realize how far we have come until those milestone days.
Moving onward
“Time like an everflowing stream bears all its sons away,” Isaac Watts lamented almost exactly 200 years ago. He had reason for pessimism – average life expectancy in England was about 40 years. Between plagues and wars, life was, in the words of philosopher Thomas Hobbes, “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Since then, though, medical progress has doubled life expectancies – one cause of the world’s population explosion. Technology has freed us from being trapped forever in our parents’ village, nation, or occupation. Science has expanded our knowledge enormously.
Swept along by the currents of time, we’re rarely aware of those changes. We drift in our present realities, rarely recognizing even the changes in our own lifetimes.
Yet despite occasional reversals, we humans are far more compassionate, more generous, more tolerant than we were a few centuries ago. True, we haven’t ended wars. We haven’t solved environmental degradation, fraud, and exploitation. But at least we recognize that we need to work at those things.
Just as we need to protect the rights of non-human life on this planet, too.
Like the TV camera watching the traffic ebb and flow in downtown Kelowna, we have learned to see patterns in the flow of time.
*****************************************
Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
*****************************************
YOUR TURN
Sarah Holdt was the first of a series of readers who informed me that I had mistakenly credited the words of the song I quoted to Jim Strathdee (who certainly did adapt them, and added the music): “The hymn you quote is a variation of a poem written by black activist Howard Thurman (1899-1981) called The Work of Christmas.”
Others passing along the same message included Sarah Holdt, Priscilla Gifford, Miryam Hammond, Gary Taylor, Stephanie McClellan, Vicki Hammel, Steve Hermes, and Jeremy Smith.
I must apologize for failing to give credit appropriately. The two hymnbooks I checked attributed both words and music to Jim Strathdee; I trusted them to be accurate.
Richard Best added that Jim Strathdee “usually tells, when he introduces this song, that the words (somewhat rearranged by Jim to make them melodic) come from Howard Thurman, who was Dean of the Chapel of Howard University and Boston University School of Theology. To quote the first paragraph of a Wikiquotes article, ‘Howard Thurman… was an influential American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader. He was Dean of Chapel at Howard University and Boston University for more than two decades, wrote 21 books, and in 1944 co-founded … the first integrated, interfaith religious congregation in the United States.’”
June McIntyre agreed about modern-day prophets: “In my opinion, authors and writers (well, some!), such as yourself, are the messengers of prophecy more often than they think. Today's column is a good example of this. When asked some time ago what I thought the face of God is like, my answer was: ‘Every time I see a newborn babe, I am reminded of the awesomeness of our Creator… their eyes have their soul shining through!’”
Ted Wilson thought Simon and Garfunkel should also be considered prophets: “And the people bowed and prayed/ To the neon god they made…And the sign said, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls/ And tenement halls/ And whispered in the sounds of silence.”
David Gilchrist liked Dawne Taylor’s phrase (in last week’s letters) of Jesus “born AND BORNE in our hearts.” “When (not ‘if’) I use that term,” David wrote, “I will acknowledge where I learned it.”
David went on, “This week? I particularly liked your analogy of a prophet as ‘The grain of sand in an oyster -- which could become a pearl, IF NURTURED’ [his capitals]. That addition makes all the difference in the world to the image and meaning.”
Bob Rollwagen liked the same image: “The grain of sand that has the potential of being a perfect pearl. Christmas is about that grain of sand. The child that was born into a troubled world. A child that some scholars had anticipated. The first child into a young family that would have challenges, and moved to strange land instead of returning home. Their work was to raise and support this child so that he was strong and capable of walking on his own. They would seem to have been parents that encouraged learning and fairness and supported their community. While they were concerned about their growing child’s desire to speak out, they remained open to his ideas and commitment.
“To change the world, Christmas tells us that the work begins at home with our children. Children do much of their learning from birth to preteen, in the womb of the home. They need to be ready when they start to go out into the world.
“Bullies, bigots, racists, hatred – these are learned concepts from a family womb that has not understood the meaning of Christmas.”
Tom Watson liked a closely related metaphor: “Thanks for this timely reminder that there is much 'work of Christmas' to be done. Will 2018 be the 'pebble in the shoe of time' that causes the current power structures to be even moderately concerned about the lost and lonely, the hungry children of countless refugees, those imprisoned either behind walls or because they simply don't count in today's world... Or is that too big a stretch, way too much to expect? That would require, of course, a dramatic change in priorities...a shift from emphasizing the saying of ‘Merry Christmas’ to actually doing it.
“On a personal level, what can I—one solitary octogenarian—do about much, or any, of this? The pebble in my shoe is to constantly remind myself of the importance of making music in my own 'old person's heart', and there's a word for that music: it's called Hope. How the next 365 days will turn out begins with that one word.”
Jean Hamilton wondered, “Where would you look for an ‘influential pulpit’ these days? I think that an extinct species…”
JT: I probably should have used “podium” rather than “pulpit.” I was thinking about any position that elevated a speaker to make him/her more audible to the public.
*******************************************
PSALM PARAPHRASES
If you feel like substituting "Great Spirit" or "Great Mystery" for the name "God” in Psalm 72, go ahead
1 Let every leader be as just as you are, O God.
2 Let every leader judge the poor properly;
the poor need justice even more than the rich.
3 Even when prosperity piles up like mountains,
let it not bury those who need fair treatment most.
4 Wise leaders will watch out for the weak;
they will protect the poor from the greedy;
they will keep would-be tyrants on a tight leash.
5 As long as the grass grows and the rivers run,
let God be our example.
6 God's justice is as welcome as rain on parched prairie,
as a cold drink on a hot day.
7 It causes peace and harmony to blossom in arid soil;
goodness and mercy will flow from our footsteps.
10 So let those who have worldly wealth bring their gifts to God;
let our leaders lay their ambitions before God.
11 Let them stumble over their own sly schemes and fall on their faces;
let them come down to the level of the least of their people.
12 Then all the nations will know that God looks after the weak, the poor, and the helpless.
13 God takes pity on them.
14 God rescues the victims of prejudice and neglect;
their lives are precious to God.
For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.
*******************************************
TECHNICAL STUFF
If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to jimt@quixotic.ca. Or you can subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message or subject line) to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at softedges-unsubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca.
I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca
I’m leaving out some of the links to other blogs and pages, to see if those links have caused the recent blockages, preventing some of your from receiving the columns at all, and preventing others from sending responses. We’ll see.
********************************************
PROMOTION STUFF
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols.
Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca
Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://wwwDOThymnsightDOTca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom
Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet