From the ages of eight to twelve I was a chorister at Durham Cathedral. One of the most memorable annual services we participated in as choristers was the Three Hours on Good Friday. As the name suggests, it was a three hour long service from 12 noon to 2pm. For a nine year old three hours feels like an incredibly long time. Long enough to get bored. Long enough to ponder the nature of the crucifixion.
It was strange. The solemnity. The performed sadness. I knew that in two days time there would be the celebration of Easter Sunday. So why bother being sad? The linearity of time is important. In the words of the original Roman Missal: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” The tenses matter there: the church situates itself between the resurrection and the second coming. There is future and there was past. And death, we were told, had been overcome by life. Why mourn the risen?
Time doesn’t move in a single direction, though. Scientists in the nineteenth century began to hypothesise about time as the fourth dimension. Indeed, Einstein’s concept of spacetime demands that we conceive of time as such a dimension. For Boethius, an early medieval philosopher/theologian, the question of non-linear time lay in the realm of the divine.
In his ‘Consolation of Philosophy’ (one of the most influential texts in Europe until the Renaissance) we read:
God is eternal; in this judgement all rational beings agree. Let us, then, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a revelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge. Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment. (Book V, Chapter VI)
I find this interesting for two reasons. First, that temporality (or, as it is often termed, atemporality) is essential to the nature of the divine. To attempt mystical interaction, in Boethian terms, we must somehow come to terms with this. Even to understand the nature of the eternal somehow reaches towards acquiring divine knowledge. Second, that notion of endlessness existing in a ‘single moment’. It is a hugely challenging concept. One that is almost impossible to imagine.
Boethius tries to explain it further:
Accordingly, that which includes and possesses the whole fulness of unending life at once, from which nothing future is absent, from which nothing past has escaped, this is rightly called eternal; this must of necessity be ever present to itself in full self-possession, and hold the infinity of movable time in an abiding present.
Boethius is fascinated by movement and stillness. Eternity, he states, absorbs infinite movement into stasis.
How then can we attempt interaction with this infinite? Always failingly, says Boethius. Things get complicated:
For the infinite progression of things in time copies this immediate existence in the present of the changeless life, and when it cannot succeed in equalling it, declines from movelessness into motion, and falls away from the simplicity of a perpetual present to the infinite duration of the future and the past; and since it cannot possess the whole fulness of its life together, for the very reason that in a manner it never ceases to be, it seems, up to a certain point, to rival that which it cannot complete and express by attaching itself indifferently to any present moment of time, however swift and brief; and since this bears some resemblance to that ever-abiding present, it bestows on everything to which it is assigned the semblance of existence.
This is a very long sentence from an outdated (free) translation so I’ll paraphrase but it is important to recognise that the argument might seem back to front to us. This stems from the fact that Boethius argues that the original state of being is the divine state of stillness that he previously explained. He states that the temporal movement experienced by humans is merely an attempt to replicate this. This attempt can never succeed and we slip from perfect stasis into infinite movement. This experience of infinite movement is the human experience of temporality. He goes on to say that this infinity might seem like eternity but cannot be called so. And yes, time is an illusion providing, in the words of this translation, a ‘semblance of existence’. The true existence being the only existence worth knowing: that of the eternal.
A strikingly Boethian expression of time is found in Eliot’s first of his ‘Four Quartets’: ‘Burnt Norton’. The poem famously begins:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
It seems obvious when the two are next to each other that they are related. All of the ‘Four Quartets’ turn themselves and each other over in a gorgeous introspection that almost cubistically considers the ideas of time and motion.
In the second section of ‘Burnt Norton’ part of the allure of the infinite is described:
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
The idea of the infinite is exciting, beguiling and enchanting because it is everything and nothing. All there could ever be with none of the terror that might ordinarily accompany such an overwhelming presence. No dance and only the dance. It bears resemblance to a John Donne prayer I read at my grandfather’s funeral:
Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity: in the habitations of thy majesty and glory, world without end.
I’m aware of this prayer because there’s a beautiful setting of it we used to sing at Durham. Here’s a recording of it by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge.
Crucially, though, for Boethius and Eliot the attempt to reach the perfection of eternity is defined by its impossibility. Nonetheless, that doesn’t stop either of them from trying. For Boethius especially, the only thing giving value to temporality is its similitude to atemporality. Might there be a way to emphasise this similitude or work against the constraints of linear temporality? Certainly, it is attempted.
The phenomenon of affective piety developed in the late Middle Ages. It was instigated in response to an understanding that theology had gotten far too complicated for lay understanding. Also a feeling that emotional engagement was superior to theoretical. It encouraged congregations to imagine themselves at important moments of Christ’s (or less often a saint’s) life, particularly the Passion.
A good example comes from the late 14th/ early 15th century mystic, Julian of Norwich. Her ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ are a document of her visions and consequent theological directions on them. The visions alternate between scenes from Christ’s life and direct addresses to Julian. In the following passage Julian recalls being shown Christ’s bleeding head:
In all the tyme that He shewed this that I have seid now, in ghostly sight I saw the bodyly sight lesting of the plentious bledeing of the hede. The grete dropis of blode fel downe from under the garland like pellots semand as it had cum out of the veynis, and in the comeing out it were browne rede, for the blode was full thick, and in the spredeing abrode it were bright rede, and whan it come to the browes, than it vanyshid; notwithstondying the bleding continuid till many things were seene and understondyn. (Part VII)
During the time he showed me these things that I have just said [a previous section about the importance and function of the Virgin Mary] in ghostly sight [see below] I saw the lasting bodily sight of plenteous bleeding from the head. The great drops of blood fell down from under the crown of thorn like seeds coming from the veins and in the coming out were brown-red, and when the blood spread became bright red until it reached the brows where it vanished. Despite this, the bleeding continued until many things were seen and understood.
A lot of ink has been spilled surrounding the difference between Julian’s ‘gostly’ and ‘bodyly’ sight. Suffice to say, although they are not interchangeable, what matters is that the visions heavily rely on physical sensation. In this sense, they are ‘bodily’ because they are felt as well as seen. This is really the essence of affective piety.
Specifically in regards to temporality this passage has a lot of interest. First, there is that beguiling word ‘lesting’ which I have translated as ‘lasting’. The usage is strange, though. It seems to imply a continuation of the bleeding beyond what might be expected. Similarly, the final words of the quotation: ‘the bleeding continued until many things were seen and understood.’ Time in the vision isn’t contingent upon its real-world duration in the Passion; rather, it depends on the time it takes for Julian to be sufficiently enlightened.
For me, though, it is the fluidity of the blood that gives such an odd sense of time. Water has long been associated with the passing of time and water clocks were some of the first time-keeping devices. The stream of blood in this passage opposes conventional stasis. And yet, it disappears when it reaches the brow. It flows and doesn’t flow.
Julian is obsessed with the moisture of Christ’s body. Later in the work she describes how his body dried out on the cross. Then later again she returns to a vision of flowing blood which heals. The visions go back and forth between this elemental binary. Indeed, Julian often returns to a part of the Passion she has nominally gone past. The impression is one of totality; of wetness and dryness simultaneously. It is in this way that Julian describes the eternal. A confession that every moment of Good Friday exists at all times in the present on the ultimate eternal plane.
During the Three Hours every year we would sing a setting of the African American spiritual ‘Were You There?’ The first verse goes:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
O sometimes it causes me to tremble! tremble! tremble!
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Here’s a recording by Marion Williams. I’m also really really interested by the extended use of vibrato in this recording. Our choir master at Durham used the analogy of ‘spinning a plate’ to teach us how to sing using vibrato. Spinning a plate allows the plate to be horizontally and vertically still by maintaining its circular motion.
Now, clearly the answer to the lyric’s question is ‘no’. But I think the obviousness of that answer is in fact the reason for the song’s power. There is a connection outside and above time that still results in ‘tremble’.
The words of the final verse that I remember singing are ‘Were you there when they rolled the stone away?’ I don’t think they’re the original lyrics and they’re not in the Williams version but I prefer them. The tune and refrain remained unchanged.
In the infinite presence of eternity, Christ is both alive and dead. Joy does not overwhelm sorrow but exists coequally in an incomprehensible harmony.
Coda: time and pilgrimage
The flight time from London to Rome is around two hours and forty minutes. My walk will take three months.
I haven’t left yet and each time I take some form of transit I am very aware of how quickly I am moving. How slowly I will be moving soon.
Technology generally succeeds or fails on its ability to reduce the expenditure of time. It gives you more time to do other things. To enjoy things more efficiently, perhaps. Or perhaps not.
If we are obsessed with the length of time something takes surely all we value is time’s linearity.
This is not the same as ideas of not valuing the present, of living ‘in the moment’. It is about trying to escape limitations of past, future, and even present. Of course, such an escape is impossible since it must be made from within those very constraints.
Any form of ritual pushes against our natural understanding of linear time. It is an act of participation in past timelines and future timelines. It also disregards the sense of ‘useful’ time.
Pilgrimage is a sort ritual: an avoidance just as much as it is an act of progress. A stillness in motion, perhaps. In this, it looks for value outside of time.
Footnotes
I’m planning a post on seasonality and especially April as a period of departure. Any reading suggestions gratefully received!
Links for texts:
Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy
also, a good biography and summary of arguments here.
Eliot: ‘Four Quartets’
Julian: Middle English edition
‘Were you there’: Wikipedia entry
Have a great time and stay safe! 😘
Thanks Fi! x