Uncle Nigel

Nigel Goodwin

Time

To “remember your Creator

Before the dust returns to the ground it came from,

And the Spirit returns to God who gave it.”

During my teenage years, whilst at school, I was fast developing the idea that my life’s goal was to pursue a calling in theatre. My school days were, equally and actively divided between a passion for sport and for the performing arts. During that era, the 1950’s, Roger Bannister conquered the sound-barrier of the running track. Many of you reading this will know that he was the first man to run the 4 minute mile. It was his time, his season. His moment of fame and glory captured on film and held in time for generations not yet born to recall and enjoy in their time.

Undoubtedly the most definitive piece of writing, written thousands of years ago, yet relevant to our own time is in the book of Ecclesiastes. Its thoughts are echoed, if faintly today, within as well as outside theological circles. Time has a variety of seasons and a multiple focus. There are numerous ways of describing time says the writer. Its origins developed as man both observed and experienced the changes occurring in the planetary system. Holst’s “Planet Suite,” is a wonderful example of how the language of music can bring to the listener a sense of awe, wonder, power and mystery, as we travel with the composers’ galactic experience.

What we know in our time, through philosophy, science and the arts, and perhaps most especially the queen of sciences – theology, has been interpreted over thousands of years. Astrologers have read the signs of the time since mankind looked up from the earth to wonder at the stars above. The Hubble telescope has helped us to see more and to gasp at the wonder of what is there. Time has a finite and transient quality coupled with an endless, beyond, infinite reality.

Out of the Silent Planet

Out of the Silent Planet was written by CS Lewis, one year before the Second World War. Lewis believed that a time was approaching (not necessarily in his time) when time, as we know it, would cease. That the eternal, beyond time would become for all of us, a present continuous reality. “A world’s not meant to last forever, much less a race that is not Maleldil’s (God’s) way.” The concept of beyond or outside time cannot be grasped unless one is willing to study honestly what is observable with the additional, intrinsic ingredient of faith. In the letter written to the Hebrews and in chapter 11, the writer tells us that, “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Does this mean a risk taking, blind leap into the dark, an escape from reason? Not at all. All discovery, all newness, is based on taking a step into time from the known into the unknown. This is not an unreasonable step. It is founded upon revealed truth.

What might time mean for the Arts?

For those in performance arts, who give their gift away to their audience night after night, time has an elusive quality. Nothing stands still. Nothing is held in a frame, nothing is concrete. No performance given yesterday can be perfectly repeated today or tomorrow. Even when recorded or held in time, by the use of contemporary technology, its very essence has gone out in time, space and history. There is a fragility and vulnerability to every performance. Convergence, focus and discipline are paramount to all worthwhile productions. The fine and applied arts, on the other hand, require a different form. They frame their work by holding it in time. Great works of Art come down to us through time. They are held in museums and galleries for today’s and tomorrow’s generations to both appreciate and applaud. In Ecclesiastes 3:11 the writer says of the Great Artist that, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” This would suggest that even beauty has limitation and conflicts somewhat with the poet John Keats, who said, “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever, its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness.” The Creator continues through the writer in the second half of verse 11, where he says, “He has set eternity in the heart of man.” In all of humankind though most often expressed by artists, is a longing for a home. A rest that promises continuousness peace. A place where toil and labour cease, somewhere out there in time. The great Bernstein musical score of West Side Story, based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, underscores this in the lyrics, “Somewhere, there’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us, time together with time to spare, time to learn, time to share, somewhere.”

Beyond time

If we truly believe that matter on planet earth was created in space, in time and in history, we can then begin to grasp the concept of “beyond time”. A place where time will be no more, an infinite perspective to our own limited “through a glass darkly” vision of reality. Outside of time there is a continuousness state – from everlasting to everlasting. God always was, always is and always will be. The Great Artist, who is ever-present in his creation, yet not bound like his creatures to his creation. When God is limited as many suggest, he becomes easily quantifiable, packaged and disposable. The finite cannot remove the infinite. Ask yourself this question, If God does not exist, why do those who shout the loudest about his non-existence, get so worked up? Humans cannot escape the limitations of their humanity, nor can they run from the desire and eternal quest for meaning and identity, which was placed there by intention of God. Thus the search for the great beyond time.

Staying in tune

The late Sir John Gielgud, in my opinion one of the truly great actors of the twentieth century, said in an interview, “that he did not think that he was sufficiently up to date, in tune and contemporary”. He was discussing modern ways of interpreting the old classics. Staying in tune or in time with a work becomes more difficult as one grows older. Shakespeare writing in the fifteenth century declares this in his speech his “seven ages of man” speech from As You Like It. Gielgud is saying there is more than a contemporary interpretation of a character, a play, costume or fashion change. He is alluding to the fact that words change their meaning over time. Different cultures see new and different ways of interpreting. This can become very complex, especially when one generation is attempting to understand and communicate with another. Our different time zones may cause great grief, unless we are willing to develop a dialogue of relationship, searching for and finding the tunes and rhythms of one another, thus learning to live with our deepest differences. Really well crafted work will have a timelessness about it. Placed in the right hands, its ring of authenticity will sound down the centuries. The issues dealt with remain the same and the work stands the test of time. Some works do not transition. Their value is for the season, context and cultural setting of their time alone. When Robert Bolt’s play, A Man For All Seasons was first produced on the West End Stage, it took its historical setting and context from the writers perception as well as research into the fourteenth century court of Henry VIII, then placing it before us, a 20th Century audience, how would we respond? The leading protagonist, the late very fine, Paul Schofield, in the character of Sir Thomas Moore, gave voice to a person of truth and integrity, who declared these virtues before friend and enemy alike. We the audience seeing and hearing the context of the play interpreted it in our own context and setting. Peter Schaeffer’s work Amadeus is a more extreme example of what I am getting at. When God raises up a voice, as he does in every generation, to call out in the market place or inner court of power, the voice is prophetic. However uncomfortable for the caller and receiver, the truth spoken will speak deeply and powerfully because of its authentic timelessness.

Time and tide wait for no man

Even as I write this article, it quickly becomes history. Nothing is more disposable than information technology, as it flies through cyber space on the world wide web. Forests are cut down, especially if we want to print and hold in time the thoughts that flash before our eyes. In the old phrase, “time and tide wait for no man”, there is a sense of the flexible, always the ebb and flow of the hungry search engine of human enquiry. If it is out there Google will find it and if it is not it soon will be. Perhaps the greatest danger of the overkill of information is that it has the ability to produce a flat and sterile world rather than a rounded, organic growth of positive development. Even rich and rewarding ideas become flattened into virtual reality, void of subtlety and mystery. In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome the writer says, “What can be known about God is plain to everyone”. He declares that God can be seen and understood through everything that has been made in time. Every work reveals its author. The finite store house of “knowing” reveals without limiting the infinite mansions of God’s dwelling. This is supremely declared to earth, when scripture tells us in the letter to the church in Galatia, “when the time was fully come God sent forth his Son”.

I still haven’t found what I am looking for

Bono, great lyricist and lead singer of U2, himself a follower of Jesus Christ speaks often to himself and his audience of the longing restlessness of his generation for the declaration and desire of rest. Flesh limited by time, cries out from spirit for a space beyond time, an eternal peace. Back in Ecclesiastes, this longing for eternity has been placed in every heart. The more restless a generation or culture becomes the more they will cry out for home, a place to be and to become. It is as if humanity cut adrift on a sea of uncertainty, cries out for the connection of the parent child relationship. Shakespeare says, “there is a tide in the affairs of man which if taken at the flood leads on to fortune”. There is a moment or a number of different moments in our lives when we need to move in the flow and the rhythm of them, ie “seize the day”. Many years ago, somebody said to me, “know your moment, or it will slip through your fingers”. Steven Hawkins, in his book A Brief History of Time, seems to have grasped something of the awe, wonder and magnitude of the universe, recognising that we are but a tiny particle of dust in it. What he may not have yet grasped though this is between him and his Maker (as it is with all of us) that it is faith that takes us from “knowing about” into “knowing who”. This step from the known into the unknown does not leave us more broken and shattered on the rocks below, but allows us in time to enter and experience the glorious transformation that takes place when we move from the darkness of unbelief into the light of belief. Taking this step forward in time does not mean the closing of the mind and reason, but rather the reverse. From chameleon to catalyst, “be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may know God’s perfect and acceptable will” (Romans 12:1,2). In time we are being changed so that when time is no more, we will be ready, perfect and set for glory, at the end of time.