Numbering Our Days

A friend sent me a link to an article in Aeon on the invention of linear time (the author is Paul Kosmin of Harvard). This invention is to think of time as just “there” and able to be numbered. We take it for granted. This year has the number 2019. In ten years it will be 2029; in a hundred years, 2119. Our ability to number time allows us to imagine it stretching before us indefinitely, and independently of events. No matter who is president, no matter what kind of phones we have (or if we have something that has replaced phones), no matter our own health or even whether we ourselves are alive—in ten years it will be 2029.
    Before numbering time in this way was invented, dates were given by reference to events. We see this in the Bible. Isaiah 6:1 is famous: “In the year that King Uzziah died . . .” as is Luke 2:1-2: “there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed . . . this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.”
    To tie events to other events is deeply human. I find that when I read about something that happened a few decades ago, I try to connect that event with where I was living and what was going on in my life. I remember, for instance, Yeltsin, but when I read that he became president of Russia in 1991, I think: that was the third year of my rectorship in Hopewell Junction, and Richard Grein was bishop of New York, and George Bush was president, and it would be two more years before the discovery of Susan’s tumor. I could of course write it this way: “In the third year of the presidency of George Bush, Richard Grein being bishop of New York and Susan’s health still fully with her, Boris Yeltsin became president of Russia.” But we don’t write it that way; we write “in 1991.”
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    To number time is clearly to gain a certain power over it. With that number “1991," for instance, we very efficiently get past our local and personal events and place them—place everything—on a “timeline” that we can construct and lay out before us without any end in sight. Every event of history, and every possible future event, comes within our grasp as we put it in its place.
    That is to say, there is a theological danger in counting time. It’s the danger of pride, close cousin to the danger of idolatry.
    In that article in Aeon, Professor Kosmin wonders if the invention of linear time (which happened about 311 B.C. with the Seleucids) is behind the warnings of, for instance, the book of Daniel (which is normally dated about one or two hundred years after that). The book of Daniel deals with the pretensions of empire, but it continually says: proud empire will not stretch indefinitely into the future. It will fall apart; it will be humbled.
    We could see the same point in the book of Revelation. Time will come to an end. The scroll of history is not meaningless and infinite; to the contrary, it is a finite scroll, and the Lamb that was slain is able to open its seals and give it its meaning.
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    Psalm 90:12 (in the BCP translation) is dear to me: “So teach us to number our days * that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” Of course this means that we need to remember that the days of our life are finite, and since our lifespan is finite, we need to apply ourselves wisely, apply our hearts to God’s wisdom. But it also means there is a right way and a wrong way to number our days. “So” means, then, that we ask God to teach us to number our days in the right way: not to be tempted to think of my time as a piece of universal time stretching into the future independently of God. Time itself is in God’s hands and has its end in God.
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    Out & About. Sunday, June 9, will be the next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar. Our text is the splendid The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. At Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Anyone who reads it is welcome.
    Before then is our conference on “What’s the Good of Humanity?” It would be great to see you there, if you can come: June 3-5 in Baltimore: http://www.e-ccet.org/pro-ecclesia-conference-2019-whats-the-good-of-humanity/
    What Theologians Read. Kosmin’s “A Revolution in Time” is here: https://aeon.co/essays/when-time-became-regular-and-universal-it-changed-history

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with
Tags: the episcopal church, victor austin, diary of a theologian, the episcopal diocese of dallas

Trees

An odd thing about Dallas is that you can hear the sound of leaf blowers any time of the year; their labor ceases not. Even today, there were dead leaves on the sidewalk as I walked to dinner. Trees here don’t lose leaves only in the fall; it happens year round. And the opposite happens year round also: there are always new leaves being made, if not in one tree, then in another species. Trees are continually changing.
    I’m writing this on a plaza. Beyond a parking lot there are eight or so distinct trees; beyond them, reaching above a shopping strip, a continuous bank of tall trees. They are varied in ways I lack the words to describe. Some are shaped by their sharply visible trunks; others are impressionistic blurs of green color in a roughly conical shape. I say there are about eight trees, and there are more than eight shades of green among them, from tree to tree and within each one, subtle variations that are beautiful and ineffable.
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    I think of trees as wanting to praise God. This was the conceit behind Susan’s story about trees (printed at the end of Losing Susan): that the trees wanted to know how to praise God, and he first forgot about them, but then told them to lift up their arms in silent prayer.
    They look so immovable, the trees. Everywhere they are fixed in the ground. They don’t move like rabbits or birds. But still they are alive. They shed leaves and push out new ones. They lift their arms, their branches, striving to reach up towards their maker.
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    Hallowed be thy name: I think of this as I run in the morning, not too fast, and pass so many trees. I get to know them, and can tell they have changed. It’s imperceptible to the casual passerby, but watch them for awhile and you’ll see, not just the shedding and producing of leaves, but the changes in color, in tint, in fullness. The slight growth upwards, and outwards. They look still, like rocks, but they grow, they change, like children, like neighbors.
    They want to praise God, just as you and I do.
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    Do trees know Jesus’ name? Susan gave them grief. They provided the wood for Jesus’ cradle. They gave his father Joseph a line of work. But then they had to be the material on which the dear Son died. Why did he have to die on a tree?
    So, she said, they wept. Their branches fell; they drooped to the ground; they were burdened by the deepest sadness in the world: he, the dearest one, had died on them.
    But then they awoke on Sunday, and there was the new life, the Son walking underneath and between them. Slowly, and then strongly, they raised their branches again. And once again they praised God.
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    Out & About. This Sunday, May 19, will be the “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar on Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, 6 to 7:30 p.m. If you read the novel, you’re welcome to the conversation.
    June 3-5, from Monday evening through Wednesday noon, a conference I organize (the Pro Ecclesia conference) is happening in Baltimore: “What’s the Good of Humanity?” We have many excellent speakers, and it is a good time. I would love to see you: http://www.e-ccet.org/pro-ecclesia-conference-2019-whats-the-good-of-humanity/
    If you are not going to be in Baltimore for that Pro Ecclesia conference, then you might want to check out an event at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in New York City. Rowan Williams will give a lecture, “The Embodied Logos,” under the auspices of Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Tuesday, June 4, at 6 p.m. Information about the conference in general is here, but you might not need to register for Williams’ lecture alone:  https://forever.fordham.edu/s/1362/18/interior.aspx?sid=1362&gid=1&pgid=7133&content_id=7136&_ga=2.157923322.1799732053.1557791273-891755505.1557791273. I note the conference also includes lectures by Carolyn Chau and Peter Bouteneff, both of whom have spoken in recent years at our conferences in Baltimore.
    What theologians read. If you don’t have it, I recommend my book, Losing Susan, not for my own writing, but for the appendix which is this tree story! The Kindle or other e-book is very reasonably priced.

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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