Redeeming the time

Martyn Percy (Editorial, Modern Believing, Volume 40:4, October 1999)

When the twentieth century began, it took some Italian futurists to somewhat arrogantly proclaim that ‘time and space died yesterday'. Time was sacralised systematisation of solar cycles, roughly adjusted by the Church to collaborate with Christian history. Space has only been laid out in more recent history: a meeting in Washington in 1884 gifted the world longitudes, and divided the world, peeling east and west, from its then centre, London. This in turn led to the formation of an international date line, which runs through a largely vacant Pacific. This virtual line in space consumes time if you travel east, but collects it if you travel west.

Time is a contested concept. Even something as ‘simple' as the beginning of the millennium cannot be agreed upon. Does it start in Greenwich at 24:00 hours, GMT, on 31st December 1999? Or should the party in the Dome wait another year until 2000? Does the first dawn of the millennium occur on the island of Kiribati (recently re-named Millennium Island by the King of Tonga), or at 4.45 am on Pitt Island (population 55), part of the Chatham Islands, 500 miles off the coast of New Zealand? If the millennium dates from GMT, then the first light of the new millennial dawn will fall on the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. If the Chatham Islands take their location seriously, then the first sunrise of the new millennium will be seen from their very own Hakepa Hill, with the nearest residence being Lanauze Farm. Suffice to say, the television rights to film that first dawn were sold long ago.

The Chatham Islands and Greenwich are both good places to begin the millennium. The Chatham Islands were ‘discovered' in 1791 by Lt Broughton, who named them after his ship. They were sparsely inhabited then, as they are now: about 800 souls in total, who eke out a living from fishing, farming and sheep. Cars have a life span of about three years, after which the salt claims them for corrosion. There is no cinema and no McDonalds; the local radio station is run by volunteers. There is little investment in the community from outside; medical needs are infrequently served by locum doctors. There is a hostility about the vegetation: trees gnarled by fierce winds, salty lagoons clogged with kelp, and an unforgiving landscape formed from its volcanic genesis.

Perhaps if these are the islands where the millennium begins, then they serve to remind humanity of how tenuous its grip on time and nature has always been. Much of human history has been about isolated rural back-waters; Pitt Island kind of embodies this. Our lives remain at the mercy of the elements: before there was light, there was darkness – with the spirit of God brooding over the unpromising waters – seas, life and lands as yet uncreated.

Greenwich, on the other hand, offers all the techno-sophistication of the end of the twentieth century. The millennium begins in a capital city; and it can be celebrated in any number of ways, in any number of places – the Royal Observatory, in the canopy of the Dome, on the streets or in homes. Homo Sapiens may be amongst the newest and briefest tenants on this planet, but so far, they have been the most successful species in harnessing the elements. Humanity has made time. It can symbolise it, manipulate it, record it and change it. Somewhere between the bleakness of life – bare survival, at times – on the Chatham Islands and the revelling in Greenwich (celebration defined?), lies the whole history of humanity.

Reflecting on time evokes memory. This century, although one of the most progressive and ‘civilised', has also been, in Steiner's phrase, one of the most bestial. The carnage of two ‘world wars' have changed human history and identity for all time. And with this change, the issue of how memory forms future time is raised. The genocide, holocausts and slaughters of wars invite reflection: can we learn from time, or are we condemned to repeat the past? The question is more complex than it sounds, for the world that is awakening to a third millennium is more forgetful than one might suppose, its vision obscured by postmodern capitalism, consumerism and casual callousness. This may be a ‘Western' cancer, but it has global implications.

It was W. H. Auden who observed that ‘through art we are able to break bread with the dead . . . and without communion with the dead, a fully human life is impossible.' It is not only through art though: religion, and especially the Eucharist, invite a particular kind of attentive memory. Forgetfulness is the enemy of justice, and the destroyer of lasting peace; the social and theological task that beckons at the advent of the third millennium is not ‘forgive and forget', but ‘remember and forgive'. This is true not just of the world wars, but of South Africa, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans and Palestine.

It is no easy task. The French writer, David Rousset, a survivor of more than one Nazi death camp, observed that one of the major problems of the holocaust was the intention of the perpetrators to bury their crimes utterly: ‘night has fallen on the future – when no witnesses are left, there can be no testimony.' But the dead will not let us forget, and at least one of the hopes of resurrection is that the story of the deceased will live on, making their time and life as real to us as our own. Craig Raine's dark, bleak poem about a mother in a concentration camp, and the death of her newly-born baby, captures the necessity and inevitability of memory for the future: I can understand ghosts.How they have to come back.What it costs them to returnthrough the bricks of a houseEyes tight shutWeeping, broken skin.[‘Sheol', from Clay, Whereabouts Unknown (London: Penguin, 1996).]

The value of testimony and public memory for constructing the future – a just and peaceful one at that, is not in doubt. In the past, this was often a religious task. However, one of the effects of creeping secularisation has been the erosion of Feast Days, Holy Days and public acts of commemoration. Few people now speak of ‘Whitsun': it is another bank holiday in Britain. Perhaps more disturbing is the fragility of Easter. In Northern Europe at the end of the twentieth century, there may be feasting, but it is seldom accompanied by the fasting that characterises Lent and Holy Week. Christmas retains its identity for all sorts of complex social and religious reasons. In spite of the fact that the Gospels devote most of their time to the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, the focus of society's attention has shifted more to his birth. Easter is ‘dying', kept alive by an uneasy alliance of bank holidays, confectionery and commercialism.

The message of the ‘resurrection of the dead' does not carry the same weight of hope as it did 500 or 1,000 years ago. Moreover, Easter in the uncertain climate of spring feels like the right context for celebration in Northern Europe. (Even though East and West still cannot manage to celebrate Easter together – the Orthodox calendar is different to that of Catholicism and Protestantism.) Yet in New Zealand, Easter is autumnal, and Christmas at the height of summer – the seasonal associations are reversed, and this inevitably affects the public standing of such times in the Southern hemisphere. Christianity may be global; but its sense of time and ritual is linked to only one half of the globe.

Against this background, it is not surprising to see a rise in the local and global prominence of quasi-religious days that bridge the increasing gap between sacred and secular. Two examples will suffice here. First, and related to the histories of global conflict in this century, is Remembrance Day, the observation of which, since its inception, has spread throughout the Commonwealth. Although the services and ceremonies that surround the day have been (and remain, mostly) strongly influenced by Christianity, particularly Anglicanism, there are increasing signs that more attention is given to people of all faiths in the public acts of recollection. A number of towns and cities in the United Kingdom now include ministers of all faiths in these services, recognising the diversity of sacrifice and loss experienced in the wars. Remembrance Day serves a valuable common purpose to which religion gives shape, voice and flavour. Here, forgiveness is not about forgetting the past, but remembering it in ways that no longer constrain society. Moreover, the day assumes more importance as the living witnesses of history pass away, and oral memory gives way to the written. The remembrance becomes more inclusive as time passes, giving space for other faiths and groups that may have been hitherto excluded from commemoration.

Secondly, there are now ‘established' events that are assuming the character of Holy Days. In the United Kingdom, ‘Red Nose Day' (Comic Relief) occurs in Lent, and is a sustained attempt to invite the nation to give alms for the poor and needy. Schools, businesses, broadcasting networks and local communities take part in raising money, but within a context that utilises the liberation of laughter. In a sense, Red Nose Day is like a secular British Mardi Gras: the fun and the frivolity prepare the participants for the serious business of sacrifice, which in this case, is mostly financial. (Indeed, at my son's school recently, Red Nose Day was, just like a Feast Day, transferred to the day before, so the school could celebrate the event without it clashing with a holiday.) Red Nose Day has, of course, been spread not by a political system such as the Commonwealth, but by television and radio – the new means of global emancipation and domination. It is the programme schedulers who increasingly determine the mood of memory, and set the tone of celebration for Christmas and Easter. It is not surprising that the media industry would eventually create a rival or two. The question for religious communities is whether or not they can participate and enable these secular feasts, or whether they compete with them.

These two examples of time-keeping show that the celebration of the next millennium, and probably the end of the next century, will almost certainly be very different. Assuming that the world still exists, or there has not been some kind of global apocalypse that leaves just a few hardy souls on the Chatham Islands to face an uncertain and lonely future, time itself will need to be redeemed. At present, for many Christians at least, the question is barely faced. The Vatican website claims the millennium (and the world) for the church. Many will make pilgrimages to Rome or Jerusalem. For some Christians, there is a sense that the millennium gives yet further opportunity for Christianity to claim its pre-eminence (or centricity) in the universe of faiths, much as it did at the beginning of the twentieth century, with its bold statements on world evangelisation.

Yet this seems to be a rather weak and retrospective response to the opportunities presented by the dawning of a new age. Time – even the millennium – is more complex than simply being another birthday of Jesus Christ. Other peoples and faiths will celebrate Jesus's birth without neces-sarily worshipping him; the Christian calendar is not global. To redeem time will be to recognise that attention to its religious and secular pluralism can provide an important key in respecting global, ethnic and religious diversity, and working for unity. Indeed, proper attention to the religious dynamics of time can act as a powerful antidote to the invasive power of consumerism that can threaten social and moral fabric. Time can help redeem when it is named with care; meanings of time are to be offered to societies, not imposed. And time itself can be redeemed when we live with care, ‘not as the unwise, but as the wise' (Ephesians 5: 16).

The participation of all faiths in events such as Remembrance Day offers a sign of hope: that beyond local religious festivals that are particular to faith, lies common ground on which human and religious needs can be met and can congeal. Equally, the fact that societies continue to create and mark time through religious or moral ‘memories' suggests that the world is less secular than it thinks, even in western society. The calling of time is the creation of space. And the creation of space is something that demands interpretation and habitation. It is through this space-time axis that religion will continue to help shape the next millennium and contribute to the needs of the world: past, present and future.

On that note, may I wish all readers of the journal a happy Millennium, filled with space, time, celebration and communion.

Modern Believing, MCU, October Vol. 40, No. 4, October 1999