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Morning Reflection
November 7, 2025
Time
We are all subject to time and the changes it works upon us from when we were young to when we are old. The “self” is transient and ever-changing; this is true of our own selves and also of the “selves” of the people we know. And not just people but things and places are also subject to time. “Houses, avenues, roads are, alas, as fugitive as the years.” We have all experienced the disappointment of returning to a place from our youth and finding the magic gone. Those places that we remember are located not in space, but in time, and unless we can once more become the child that first experienced the joy and the love with which they are associated, then they are lost forever.
All human endeavors are mocked and destroyed by Time. Great historical events become confused or forgotten with the passage of Time. Social values change within decades, from generation to generation. Even as individuals we forget the details of our own past and the faces of those once dear to us. Time numbs the pain we felt with the death of someone close and exhausts the ecstacy of a love that is now gone. How soon we forget. Time conquers all.
Patrick Alexander: Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time
Reflection by Peter Vanderveen
When I was young, the standard understanding of the length of a generation was approximately twenty years. Parents were said to be of a different generation than their children (the offspring they had generated). And when people spoke of a “generation gap,” this referred to things not passed on in the process of parenting.
By the time I was finishing graduate school, this measure, in some circles, had been changed. It had been flipped. A “generation” now represents whatever time is necessary for sufficient change to occur that creates a recognizable gap between how individuals perceive the world. As the rate of cultural change has accelerated – socially, educationally, and scientifically – the length of a generation has shortened. It is now possible to speak of siblings, born as little as four years apart, as inhabiting completely different generations.
It’s easy to mark how quickly generational change happens by observing how people of different ages approach and use digital technology: some try to fit this into their lives, others try to fit their lives into it.
Time was once, principally, an indicator of duration. It carried, inherently, the possibility or the promise of extension that might lead to fulfillment. It was heading somewhere. But time has changed. For now it reflects, chiefly, the speed of discontinuity and inevitable irrelevance, to the point where past and future have no real bearing. Everything important is the present.
This was evident recently, when the Cathedral in Canterbury invited individuals – largely those who were unchurched – to leave their own mark within the Cathedral nave. They were encouraged to enhance the space with graffiti (which, church leaders were quick to clarify, was temporary). The hope was that, by doing so, people could feel that the Cathedral both recognized them and welcomed them. They had a place there because graffiti is indicative of their moment.
The reaction to this was swift and negative. Many considered it the defacing of an historical treasure. I understood this. But even more, this project felt to me like a concession to the idea that, indeed, time destroys everything: all that counts is right now, and it will soon pass away – which is an idea completely antithetical to our faith and the witness of a cathedral.
For what struck me most during the choir’s recent residency in Canterbury was the powerful way in which the architecture not only expresses a sense of the eternal; it immersed us within it. Yes, the building is an amazing artifact, preserving centuries of history. But it sweeps up all of these contingent moments and sets them within a long extension of promise and fulfillment, where nothing of the past will be lost, and time does not conquer all. For God is the Lord of time.
The church dares to speak of “the fullness of time.” It’s a magnificent lens that can temper and transform the anxiety that arises from the unsettledness of change. We can root ourselves in what abides: “as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.” This duration.
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