The “Long Now Moment”: “Is Patience Still a Virtue?”

I don’t always start my Sunday’s as well as I would like. Last week was a classic example. I found myself rushing back from Sue’s. very early, to Altrincham to get ready for leading worship beginning in Urmston at 10am. I like to get to there early, certainly before 9am, to prepare myself in silence and solitude. As I left Sue’s I turned on the radio and listened to Radio 4’s excellent Sunday morning program “Something Understood”. The first word I heard was “Patience”. It was an episode on “Slowing Down”. I only heard about half of it and thought to myself “That sounded interesting”, I’ll listen to it later, it had awakened my homiletic consciousness. (I was in far too much of hurry to listen there and then, so funny!)

I found myself rushing around a bit that morning, getting frustrated as everything just seemed to take too long. I got particularly frustrated with my computer as I attempted to catch up with world affairs and friends on social networks, as well as answer emails. I remember that old familiar cry coming out of my mouth “I haven’t got time for this”, as I lost my wi-fi connection for the third time. I have noticed on cold dark, wet and windy days it seems to go down more often.

On the way to Urmston I called into the local garage and bought a coffee and petrol. I remember getting frustrated at the card machine as I attempted to pay, complaining (under my breath) it always takes so long. At which the man behind the counter responded, “people are so impatient these days, you have to wait for me to authorise the payment.” It caused me to pause and as I left I smiled and laughed at myself and once again noticed my homiletic consciousness come to life. I was noticing I was rushing and certainly lacking patience that morning.

As I drove to Urmston I found myself slowing down and truly connecting to what I was doing. I spent the day noticing so many things and truly engaged with all I was doing. I remembered the lovely two days I had just spent, slowing down and connecting. I remembered all the times I enjoyed simply walking in nature. The day before I had enjoyed a lovely walk around Sale Water Park with Sue and Poppy the dog. I thought about my times of connection walking around Dunham Massey and those beautiful deer in recent years, I also remember how connected I had felt walking round Platt Fields Park, particularly with the geese in the lake, as a student minister. It was lovely connecting all those moments that had brought me to this moment and how those moments had helped to make the moment I was living right now, they brought the moment alive. I saw the connection of my life and that moment with all life and those moments of connection that I will know and all those folk that will enjoy them when I am long gone. As I did I felt this strange sensation of time being stretched. We do not merely live in this Golden moment, but in a timeless never ending, long and deep moment, for time and space is eternal it is without limit.

Something Understood

The next morning I listened to the full episode of “Something Understood”, it has inspired this "blogspot". During the episode reference was made to what is called the “Long Now Moment.” And the “Long Now Foundation” I have to say it spoke to me powerfully as it shared some of my long held frustrations with some understandings of contemporary spirituality. Particularly how people talk about “The Now” or the “The Present” and how I find that it often feeds into our self-centredness. For me it’s not just about living in the moments, but how we live in the time and space we find ourselves and to truly see that this time and space is connected to all that has ever been and will ever be. That we and they way we inhabit time and space really does matter, for it effects everything. It’s not that we live passively in the moment, but bring it to life, and thus create a legacy for all that follows. The “Long Now Moment” speaks powerfully to my heart, my mind and certainly my soul.

The “Long Now Moment” is inspired by a story, which may well be mythos, but hey stories are all about mythos; a story of rotting Oak Beams in New College Oxford. The college was founded in the 14th century. At its heart lies a dining hall that features expensive oak beams across its ceiling. Now these great beams had lasted about 500 years, but during the late nineteenth century an entomologist discovered that the beams were infested with beetles and needed replacing. This was a big problem for the college for such beams, of sufficient size and quality, would be hard to find and expensive.

One of the college’s junior fellows suggested that there might be some worthy oaks within the college lands. The college had, when it was formed, been endowned with land scattered around England and run by the college forester. So he was called in and asked if there were any such oaks on the lands. He paused for a moment and then a reassuring expression appeared on his face and he said “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.” It seems that when the College had been founded a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. It seems that this plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years. Each forester was told that “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.” It would appear that the founders of New College were not just obsessed with themselves and their time and place. They thought of their legacy, of the generations that followed.

This story, whether true or apocryphal, has become a foundational tale of the “Long Now Moment” movement that has developed in recent times. “The Long Now Moment” movement has developed in response to the fast paced instant society that we live in today, one that does not really think of the future and has a kind of disrespect of the past, a generation that has kind of hijacked the spirituality of Now.

The innovative musician, producer and composer Brian Eno is one of the key proponents of the “Long Now Moment”, he became interested in long now living after moving to new York and being shocked how instant and insular the people living there were. It was almost as if nothing existed outside of the moment folk were living in or outside of the widow of the buildings they were enclosed within. He has said that:

“"Now" is never just a moment. The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you're in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes. It's ironic that, at a time when humankind is at a peak of its technical powers, able to create huge global changes that will echo down the centuries, most of our social systems seem geared to increasingly short nows. Huge industries feel pressure to plan for the bottom line and the next shareholders meeting. Politicians feel forced to perform for the next election or opinion poll. The media attract bigger audiences by spurring instant and heated reactions to human interest stories while overlooking longer-term issues - the real human interest…”

He continues…

“…We don't yet, however, live in The Long Now. Our empathy doesn't extend far forward in time. We need now to start thinking of our great-grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, as other fellow-humans who are going to live in a real world which we are incessantly, though only semi-consciously, building. But can we accept that our actions and decisions have distant consequences, and yet still dare do anything?”

Danny Hills of the “Long Now Foundation” has been working on creating a long time clock as a kind of practical symbol of the of “Long Now” living. The idea is to create a clock that will last 10,000 years. Human society has existed for 10.000 years and the idea is to put our current place at the half way point of this. On the face of it this seems like a crazy idea, how can a machine last this long? The point is though to get us think of the future. As Stuart Brand has said:

“Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think.”

Such a clock may just help us transcend the selfish thinking that keeps us enslaved in our time and space. Such short term thinking can be so destructive. “Long Now Moment” living can slow us down and help us to connect and be still enough to begin to live reverentially again. To begin to understand that how we live and act really matters, it affects our lives and it impacts on the lives of others. The trouble is that we want things now and we want them instantly. There’s nothing new here by the way, we humans have always had a tendency towards this. Perhaps this is why the religious traditions have always suggested that we need to slow down and connect and thus begin to revere once again.

This brings to mind the story of Elijah, from the Book of Kings. He wanted to know God and wanted this instantly. He goes to a cave on mount Horeb where he is told that God will pass by and speak directly to him. A great wind comes, followed by an earthquake and then a fire, but we are told that God is in none of them. Following the fire comes the still small voice – a voice, a sound like silence – this voice that is less than a whisper and yet not quite silence signals the presence of the divine.

He had to be still and he to be silent in order the know the Divine. He couldn’t rush it nor could he force it. It took patience and it took faith.

Now of course this is mythos. The one thing that has survived the 10,000 years that human society has been around are the stories the tales, the mythos, that we have shared, they are timeless. They move through time and can speak to we who live today, even though many were first told thousands of years ago. In many ways it is the stories and not the machines that connect the generations to one another. To me these are the perfect example of what it means to believe in the “Long Now Moment”. The stories connect us to the past, they connect us to the present and they connect us to the future and help us see how important it is that we leave a legacy for all who follow. The stories help us to create empathy for the other, the other not yet born that will live when we are dead and gone.

Everything matters, how we live now matters, just as how those who lived before us mattered. All life is connected and interconnected, past present and future. So how we live today will affect what is yet to come.

Let’s not just passively live in the short now, thinking only of ourselves and how we feel this moment. Let us extend our compassion beyond the confines of our little ego-centric worlds. Let’s think beyond the skin and walls we live in and develop compassion not only for those who live today but for the generations that are yet to come. Let us instead begin to live in the “Long Now” and expand our empathy and bring the moment that we live in fully alive, remembering all that came before and to build a legacy for those who follow, so that our lives will prove worth dying for by the legacies of love that we leave behind.