If that sounds like an odd question, that’s because it is. Or it isn’t.
Looking out of the hotel window in Berlin back in August I caught sight of a building with black letters on a white background. Despite the lack of a question mark, the question it posed has bugged me for the last five weeks. Here it is:
This week, ‘now’ is not long enough. Too many demands, too much preparation to do, too many decisions to make and too much to think about. I just wish ‘now’ could be longer.
But, I have also met an elderly couple today who have been giving their savings away in order to help the next generation. No sentimentality here. No easy life that has led to the freedom of costless generosity. This couple have known tragedies and loss, dislocation and regret. Yet, they told me that it is more important to live and give now than to keep saving it all up – for what? For a future that might not be there? For plans that will not be fulfilled? For an old age they are already in?
There is something to be said for living in the ‘now’ and not thinking you can take it all with you when you go. And there is something to be said for giving in the ‘now’ – not for any reward or benefit, but for the mere grace of being generous to those whose ‘now’ is proving tough.
How long is now? Answers on a postcard.
September 27, 2010 at 11:08 pm
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
How long is now to me? Or to God?
I tend to think of “now” as a point, as the instant I occupy, rather than as a segment of time (lasting a minim or a bar or a movement; a second, a minute, an hour). There isn’t any sensible way of measuring how long that is. I might be able to measure, retrospectively, the distance in time between my “now” of this instant and my “now” of five minutes ago, or reasonably predict that in another 14 minutes, that many minutes will have elapsed between my current “now” and my future “now”. But that’s very close to complete nonsense as far as useful information is concerned.
September 28, 2010 at 6:40 am
When her children were small a friend of mine would often tell her children that she would be ready or they could have their tea “in a minute”. Since the minute often got stretched owing to other things creeping in, this led them to insert the phrase “mummy minutes” into their vocabulary. A mummy minute is apparently made of elastic and can be stretched according to need.
A different concept of now?
September 28, 2010 at 8:06 am
And then there is the highly educated and cultured Alzheimer’s sufferer who is fully aware of his condition and is distraught because he cannot read any more. At the end of a paragraph he has forgotten the beginning.
Can there be a “now” without a past?
September 28, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Not an oblique Smiths reference?
September 28, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Although I spend some of my professional life encouraging people to leave gifts to churches and Christian charities in their wills, I also encourage them to give away surplus capital now rather than later, so they can see the impact of their generosity with physical rather than heavenly eyes.
In the OT, the Jews were meant to tithe their wealth, not just their income. It is only in the modern world, where many people do not have much disposable wealth, that it has become the norm to think about tithing and proportional giving in terms of personal income rather than wealth. Muslims still teach that their equivalent of compulsory religious giving is a percentage (1.5%) of disposable wealth each year.
In the US, Bill Gates & Warren Buffett (the two richest families) have pledged to give away most of their wealth during their lifetimes (to Africa etc). Now they have challenged all the American billionaires to give away at least half their wealth during their lifetimes in The Giving Challenge. So far 40 billionaires have signed up! And the Challenge is beginning to spread globally, with the first Chinese signatory.
In the UK people like Lord Sainsbury and Lord Ashcroft made similar pledges some years ago.
September 28, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Ian
would you explain this a little more, please? Our wealth is generally made up of our accumulated income, so tithing our wealth would mean giving from the same basic amount again and again, in effect resulting in much more than tithing.
For people with property or financial investments tithing based on wealth could conceivably mean giving more than 100% of income. I’m sure I’m misunderstanding you.
Later you speak of “disposable” wealth. What does that mean?
Thank you.
September 28, 2010 at 10:32 pm
I think now is as long as you want it to be. The drill sargeant yells at the rookie soldier and he had better move before his rear meets the foot. The bride and groom on honeymoon never want it to end. Now is what you make it.
September 29, 2010 at 6:40 am
First impression.
Is “now” bounded by past “regret’ and “uncertainty” about the future?
Now is possibly the time reference of stability/knowness which at least has the merit of comprehensibility untainted by receding/clouding/complicatedly- explained “then”.
September 29, 2010 at 8:56 am
“But, I have also met an elderly couple today who have been giving their savings away in order to help the next generation.”
With one “child” at university and another back home after those days, my wife and I know how they feel!
September 29, 2010 at 9:19 am
For some “how long is now?” is the time to the next drink or cigarette or celebrity worship; but for others (such as your couple) “now” becomes the future, so by definition it becomes infinity.
September 29, 2010 at 11:48 am
“Now” never is. Think about it. If you say to someone, “Please do this now!”, by the time the sound waves you created have travelled the distance to their receptors, let alone them actually interpreting the message and then acting on it [even assuming they obey the instruction 'instantly'] several seconds have gone by and the “now” you intended is already in the past. The same would be true if you issued the instruction to yourself, though the time lag might be shorter.
The image I have in my head is of a figure on a running machine – the kind they have in gyms. All the while the figure is moving forward, time is running backwards and away behind them like the conveyor belt under their feet. It always seems a very apt analogy – have you ever tried standing upright on one of those things!!? Oh, the precarious nature of existence ..
So, “seize the moment” is a fantasy we’re best to grow out of. Everything is immediately past, including each letter as I type, and every moment a mini-death, which is why melancholy comes unbidden and why joy is a courageous and radical act. Gerard Manley Hopkins has it again. In “Spring and Fall” he imagines a woman [Margaret] grieving as the Autumn leaves fall and asks why? He assures her that age will attune her to this sadness and concludes:
It is the blight man was born for
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Sad stuff maybe but acknowledgement of our mortality is a necessary and humbling act ..
so now I will press the submit button and consign this passage to history ….. “parting is such sweet sorrow” ..
September 29, 2010 at 12:53 pm
‘Now’ is my 2 year old grand-daughter playing shops with a toy tea-set – totally immersed in what she is doing, in the ‘now’ situation.
‘Now’ is where we meet God, in the present moment. God said “I am”, not “I was” or “I will be”. Sorry, very basic idea (theology) but it fits with my experience.
Hope all is well with you.
Anne.