I.
On one of her albums, the performance artist, Laurie Anderson, asks a strange
question about time. "Is time long, or is it wide?" she asks. "Is time long, or is it wide?" On the surface, it seems like
the kind of hopelessly abstruse nonsense for which performance artists have become justly famous. But think about it.
We uncritically assume time to be long. We think of it as a "line." It stretches
like a highway or a railroad track from the past to the future, and we sort of ride along it. The past recedes into memory
and the future looms ahead of us in uncertainty. We figure time had a beginning and it will have an end; or some cultures
see time in a more circular fashion, as a line curving back upon itself, or as a spiral... but it’s still a line. It
is still perceived as long.
The idea of time being somehow "wide" doesn’t compute for us. It seems
like an irrational statement. We know what it’s like to wait for a "long" time; whoever heard of experiencing a "wide,"
or "narrow" time? We don’t talk like this.
To think of time as "wide" would be to focus not on the receding past and
the approaching future, but on the different qualities of present we all feel. It would be to focus on active potentialities,
on what signs and signals might be embedded and encoded into the present moment. At any time, there are all kinds of things
happening, which are interconnected and impacting on each other simultaneously. To think of time as "wide" would be to think
about all these presences and how they relate to each other.
I suspect that the more advanced our technology becomes, the more we will
be forced to think in terms of the wideness of time. Back when it took weeks to cross the Atlantic and months for a letter
to go to China or even San Francisco, we could think more easily of time as elongated. But now, when we have faxes and e-mail
and cell phones, more and more of us are instantaneously reachable. More of us are potentially present to each other than
ever before. The present is getting wider and wider. And the feeling we have of the length of time is diminishing.
II.
But I don’t know if this perception of time as wide is always necessarily
a good thing. I once read an op-ed piece in the Times by Lewis Lapham. He was bemoaning the breathtaking poverty of
the historical knowledge of today’s high school students. He goes through a litany of depressing statistics of these
high percentages of young people who don’t know what the Cold War was or who won it, or who was President during World
War Two, or what the term "checks-and-balances" means, or whether the Civil War came before or after the Revolutionary War.
Now, I am a history nut; I love history. I don’t need to be convinced
about how important it is that we know and understand history. And a lack of historical knowledge, especially in a multi-cultural
culture like America, is profoundly dangerous and frightening.
It’s even more scary when people fail to take a long view of the future.
The instant gratification philosophy that seems to permeate our culture practically forecloses on our future. The future must
always be cultivated and provided for in the present. I understand this very well.
And yet... we must be careful not to become so linear in our understanding
of time that we fail to look at what else is happening around us. There is more to life that is not included on the standard
line of history. Some of the most important things occurring now are not on the main-line, but off the track, outside the
gates, on the margins. The big events are happening less in the halls of economic and political power, and more in the back
streets, the garages, the small towns, and the rooms where kids play with their computers.
In a time of such comprehensive change and dislocation, as our time is, I’m
not at all sure it is as important to have as sure a grasp on the events of 1492, 1517, 1620, 1776, 1863, or 1945 as we used
to think. I’m beginning to wonder if that whole line of history, which we’ve been following since God knows when,
even functions anymore, that it hasn’t dissipated like a vapor trail in the sky.
Personally, I find myself learning less and less from those whom we usually
determine to be the "main" figures of history, and more and more from the fringe people, the people who were rejected and
forgotten, the people who didn’t gain big followings and make huge marks on the history books. I heard someone complain
recently about a public school history curriculum that devotes more attention to Harriet Tubman than to Thomas Jefferson.
At first I was concerned about this... but now I’m beginning to wonder if Harriet Tubman doesn’t have more to
teach us, these days.
After all, the Bible doesn’t care about the big figures. Alexander the
Great doesn’t even make an appearance, Augustus Caesar is only mentioned in passing, and even King Nebuchadnezzar is
a caricature. Pharoah gets a lot of attention but it is all negative. Most of the major figures in the Bible are shepherd
boys, eccentric and unpopular prophets, old people, fishers, and a baby born in a stable.
Listening to the Harriet Tubmans, along with the Amoses, the Elijahs, the
Peters, and the Marys of the world means taking a broader, wider view of time. In our time, history is less and less of a
line, and more and more a wide front. Along this front, we may discover that Harriet Tubman is more present and meaningful
to us than Thomas Jefferson. We may discover that the losers, like the Native American Chief Seattle, are more relevant and
instructive than the winners, like General Sherman. It may occur to us that Hildegard of Bingen has at least as much to teach
us as Martin Luther.
III.
Consider the apostle Paul. Viewed from the perspective of long-time, when
he talks in apocalyptic language, he appears to mean something which is to happen in the future. The End of the World is coming.
The Messiah will return soon!
But seen in a different way, in terms of wide-time, there is a sense in which
the events Paul speaks of are always present, but hidden. And we have to widen our view in order to perceive and participate
in them. The good news is this information about time being wider than we know. There is more to present reality than merely
what we can perceive with our senses. Our consciousness can only pick up a limited spectrum of what is out there. In Christ,
we can perceive this wider reality.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us that there is more to our existence;
there is an eternity, there is heaven, there is a divine Kingdom, dwelling right next to us, even within us. It is closer
to us than we are to ourselves; it hums in the space between the atoms and molecules of our bodies. It is at once infinitely
separate from us, and intimately connected to us.
Occasionally it breaks through to us and we experience a piece of it. This
is what happened most completely in the life and death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. He comes to Earth to show us the
"more" to reality and to give us some access to that "more."
Looking at the context of wide-time, Paul begins to make a little more sense
to me. I suspect that he believed in the good news and the resurrection as in some sense very present realities. He
had experienced the dynamic presence of the living Christ in his own conversion on the road to Damascus. In another of his
letters, he even says flat out: "Now is the opportune time; today is the day of salvation!" Salvation is always
"now" and "today."
I keep coming back to the example of the computer-generated "Magic Eye" pictures
which you look at and at first see only a jumble of colors and patterns. But if you look in a different way, suddenly another
image emerges. There was more to the picture than what we could see with our regular vision; but that "more" was always there,
encoded and embedded in the picture.
Or the other favorite example I have is of radio waves, which are simply a
form of light we are unequipped to perceive. But they are still there... they fill this room, in fact, along with other forms
of invisible light.
The resurrection life is like this. It is a reality that exists with and within
and around and among us, but we are not equipped to see or know it. We are mortal. We are temporal. We are limited. And yet
sometimes that reality dawns upon us in mysterious ways. Sometimes it resolves and comes to us. Sometimes it enters our consciousness,
because some of the barriers and patterns established in our minds break down.
IV.
In Jesus Christ, God, the eternal God, enters our world and shares our life.
"He was descended from David according to the flesh," says Paul, probably quoting an early Christian hymn. In his resurrection
we see the eternity, the love, the goodness, and the blessing that truly live all around us all the time.
The "obedience of faith" of which he speaks is simply the set of disciplines
in which we need to participate in order to cultivate this new and broader vision. There is a skill component to faith; there
is a training and a practice to it. And there are new ways to live according to the new way we see.
For us, time seems long. But for God, time is very wide, including everything.
Jesus comes so we can see in him this inclusive love of God, making us all present to each other in that love. May God bless
us with wider vision, seeing how all things are telling of God’s glory and salvation.
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