When God ordered creation with the gift of time, it was not like the time we measure today. Sunrise and sunset defined everything. It was simply about light and dark and not about seconds and minutes and hours. Nobody cared about them because no one needed them. Morning began with sunrise and the day ended when evening saw the sunset. Apart from that, we simply worked. We defined the hours of daylight by what we did. Some of it was for self and family in the ordinary chores of house and home and some of it was for others as well in fields and cattle. Time was largely observed by when work began and when it ended. There was no time-clock to punch, as it were; when it was light work began and when it became too dark to work, it stopped. So did we. The dark was rest.
Now the seconds and minutes and hours dominate us. We are over scheduled and under rested because the light no longer matters. We light the dark and dark the light but the ubiquitous screens live on in both and so we find it hard to rest our minds and our fingers. The busyness continues whether for work or pleasure or aimless distraction. There are fewer boundaries with the clocks ticking away and the phones reminding us about this or that. The world has become one great alarm clock with its local version the most important use of that technological marvel, the smart phone. It is smart but we are not. We have surrendered nearly everything to clocks that rule our lives and to the time we measure in the smallest of increments. Gone is the ordinary rhythm of light and dark, work and rest. In its place is a constant on in which sleep is interrupted with tones that signal notifications of this or that or texts we absolutely must see. Nothing waits and we wait for nothing. We simply have to be plugged in.
It is kind of interesting to remember that the church bell that sounded the hours when no one had watches and none had even imagined a cell phone. The church bell was not interested in making sure you were heading to your appointments but it was sounding out the hours of prayer -- less for the folks in the fields or markets or homes than for the monastics who were drawn together for prayer by those tolls. The very word for "clock," I am told, has it’s origin is from a word meaning a “bell.” And so the bell sounded into the ordinary noise of the day to announce the times for prayer the monks and nuns would keep. Few needed or wanted to know the hours except those who prayed them. Then it changed. The church gave us the clock and we took it from the church until the bells no longer chime and if they do it is not to call us to prayer but to urge us on to the next task.
By my modest search, mechanical clocks powered by weights and gears first began to appear in the 13th and 14th centuries. In cathedral towers, monasteries, and town squares these clocks were powered bells and some fancy enough to provide dancing mannequins decorated in local color. They were “clocks” because they were powered bells -- not so much telling time as announcing it. The liturgical year was the accompanying calendar to these bells. Both are pretty much lost to us and with them any sense of time as God's creation and domain. It is about us though I wish it could be said that time improved in the bargain. It did not. It became more bane than blessing and has held us captive since the sun dial made telling time portable. Oddly enough, one of the quirks of retirement is that I no longer wear a watch. Indeed, I am forever forgetting what time it is because my appointments are few, my schedules are more open, and none of it is as urgent as it once was anyway. In the beginning I thought this a problem. Now I wonder if it is less problem than a return to a simpler age when everyone was like me. Morning matters and evening but the day is less cluttered and the night left free for rest.
People are incredibly adaptable to change -- look at how we complain but then figure out how to live with the foolishness of daylight savings time! There is a limit, however. When time is not simply a day ordered by light and dark, it often becomes a prison of deadlines and demands. Our bodies and our minds were created for a rhythm and the church once announced it with the call to prayer. Now we can stay up late and rob ourselves of rest and confuse the pressing need for work with the ability to explore the internet and its games and useless knowledge without boundaries. It is no wonder that vices exploit time and our ordering of time apart from God exposes us to their influence and temptation. If there is a thing we ought to do it is to recover the sense of time ordered by light and darkness, day and night. While that might mean giving up some of our precious screen time, it will surely reward us with more than rest and some real peace. News was once a scheduled event but not it breaks in to unsettle us with what is local and what is too far away to imagine. Has it helped us? Has it contributed to the lesser evils of crime and violence? I think you know the answer. I also think you know why I long again for a time when the clock was the church's and the bell was our reminder of those who prayed as we should. Here are some older words to a very familiar hymn:
1. Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home:
2. Under the shadow of your throne
Your saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is your arm alone,
And our defense is sure.
3. Before the hills in order stood
Or Earth received her frame,
From everlasting you are God,
To endless years the same.
4. A thousand ages in your sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
5. Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the op’ning day.
6. Like flow’ry fields the nations stand,
Pleased with the morning light;
The flow’rs beneath the mower’s hand
Lie with’ring ere ’tis night.
7. Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last
And our eternal home.
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