Jesus and the Long Now

An organization called the "Long Now Foundation" is planning to build a mechanical clock that will keep time for the next 10,000 years. They call it "The Clock of the Long Now." The goal of the project is to inspire long-term thinking in a world where our whole sense of time is organized around increasingly ephemeral time-spans. I have trouble imagining the next ten years (sometimes 10 minutes is a stretch): this clock ticks once a year, with a "century hand" that advances every hundred years and a cuckoo that comes out every millenium.

Prototypes of the clock are now running in museums in London and San Fransisco, but the actual clock will be housed in a cave on top of Mt. Washington, Nevada, a region that is home, incidentally, to some 5000-year-old bristlecone pines (nature's-own Long Now Clocks).

You can click here to listen to Steward Brand talk about the search for a home for the Clock of the Long Now.

The whole aim of the Long Now Foundation is to promote slower thinking-- thinking on a scale of 10,000 years-- thinking about the long-range impact of our actions -- in contrast to the faster/cheaper/disposable/expedient mentality that has wreaked so much havoc on our environment, our cultures, our planet.

Treebeard, I think, would love these guys.

But I have to confess, when I first heard about the Clock of the Long Now, my cynicism reflex twitched involuntarily for just a moment: Yeah, right... who's gonna be around 10,000 years from now to hear that final chime?

And then it hit me, a crashing wave of conviction with an undertow of repentance, dragging my heart out into a sea of deeper faith: as a Christian, I confess Jesus Christ, coming again to judge the living and the dead. I'm the subject of a once, now and future king. And if anyone has reason for long-range thinking, I should. Because whenever Christians confess his coming to judge the living and the dead, in that very act we confess also our expectation that there will be still be some "living" around when he arrives.

Ten thousand years from now, either Christ will have returned, or we'll still be here proclaiming his death until he comes. And because we'll still be marrying and giving in marriage until the end-- and because no one knows the hour or the day-- and because a day is like a thousand years to the Lord-- because of all this, the Christian life has a future orientation that should make long-range thinking second nature to us.

In fact, the paradox of the term "the long now" itself seems to capture something about the whole Christian posture towards time: in expecting his return instantly but being prepared to wait ten thousand years, Christians are indeed living in the "long now." And whether it's tomorrow or ten millennia from now, our hope that Christ will return at last to reclaim this labouring world should inspire us to think deeply about the long-range impact of our ethical, environmental or cultural decisions in and on behalf of his world, even as we wait for him to come quickly.

A Good Day to Hope

My kids asked me to tell them the story of Lord of the Rings during one of those classic family road trips a few summers back. I told them I would, but that they needed to know ahead of time that things in the story would get really dark-- as dark as they could look-- before they started getting better-- and that the "better" would be so much more better, because the darkness got all that dark. I wanted to prepare their young hearts for the knife-edge of hope that the story teeters on.

I've been thinking a lot about hope these days. And it strikes me that today is a good day for hope. The darkness has a different name than "Mordor", but there's a lot of it: "economic downturns," "failed peace talks," "global climate change"- things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. It's hard to imagine the darkness thickening more from here. And darkness hits home, too--my heart has a lot of "why?"s and "why not?"'s and "what if?"'s these days for lots of people I love deeply.

Yeah, it's a good day to hope.

I'm also presenting my final research project for my M.Div program today. After 5 years, 96 credits, approx. 1200 pages of writing, I'm giving my final elaborate book-report on "What have I learned about being a pastor?"

It was a good day to hope the day we arrived in Caronport Saskatchewan, 5 years ago, too. I remember that summer as very hot, very stressful, and very full of eager anticipation. Stare intently as I dared into the horizon and all I could see was a haze of fascinating books to read, deep questions to ask, theological quandries to hammer out. And God and God's people to meet, and re-meet, and re-meet again.

I was reading the collected works of e.e. cummings that summer, and I read this poem that put my heart into words for me. A kind of flesh-made-word experience that helped me speak my hope. It stuck with me so deeply that I set it to music a few months later (you can click on the icon below to hear my musical interpretation of the poem).

The Apostle Paul says: Hope that is seen is no hope at all. And he's right. Sometimes things have to get as dark as they can look before they get better. But thanks be to God that once in a while, in the communion of his people, in the touch of his Spirit, in the spontaneous thankfulness for life that His grace grants us-- once in a while-- we can taste hope.

i thank You God for most this amazing

e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky, and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears are awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)