I have to confess I'm not enjoying getting a bit older. It was fine up to 30 but since then, although I feel exactly the same inside, it bugs me every time I catch sight of myself that I don't look like the same person I feel inside. It's not (just) vanity, it's the shock that shouldn't be a shock - that the march of time seems to have become a quickstep. As Martin Stephenson put it - "eternity in an hour."
There have been posts before here touching on relativity, and on the mind-melting notion that there's no such thing as "before" the Big Bang, since physics suggests that time (as we know it) is just one of several dimensions which came into existence at that 'point.' So perhaps there is no better way to express things than 'in the beginning' (whether or not there were "previous" beginnings, or multiple beginnings). Things certainly get more complicated as time moves on. Things which seemed straightforward and pretty certain in the first flush of youth - whether in medicine, in politics, in faith, or in relationships - reveal more shades of grey (as do my follicles).
Little boys are made of the same elemental stuff as big boys, but their genes aren't finished with them yet. Transformation follows, with a period spent in adolescence. Furthermore, recent work suggests that adolescence goes on quite a bit longer than was previously thought.
Confession #2. I have selfish traits. Just as I believe my genes haven't finished with me yet (not least because they're prone to corruption too), I am regularly challenged by my faith to be less selfish, and I believe God has changed me from what I would have been, but isn't finished with me yet either. What's more, I share that experience in community.
It seems to me that many of us would like to change something about ourselves. Richard Dawkins is among those who have suggested that we can 'rise above our genes.' Does the opportunity exist for transformation, even radical transformation - and not just individually, but in community? A novel I reviewed recently suggested that a restart, a kind of erasure of the past, could afford that opportunity.
A song I have loved for many years imagines a notion of rebirth.
Have a listen here. There's also some background to the song there.
"O arrow straight and slender, with grey eyes unafraid
You see the rose's splendour, nor wreck that they shall fade
Youth in its flush and flower, bare a soul of whitest flame
Eternity in an hour, all life and death in a game
May youth forever weave you, his magic around your ways
And time the robber leave you, the boy's heart all your days
Lets free ourselves, break out of lifes weight and chains, go get a whiskey, forget the game
Lets free ourselves, break out of lifes weight and chains, piss off to Texas, forget the game
We'l be living out December, from morrow through to morrow
An old belief to lead us, pencil birth to follow
Surrounded by a new time, of new flesh and new life
And so we'll weep December, and so we'll weep new life
Come the all important morning
O arrow straight and slender, with grey eyes unafraid
You see the rose's splendour, nor wreck that they shall fade
Youth in its flush and flower, bare a soul of whitest flame
Eternity in an hour, all life and death in a game
May youth forever weave you, his magic around your ways
And time the robber leave you, the boy's heart all your days
The boy's heart all your days
A child will have blended, his birth will follow."
Stephenson cites Rimbaud, so he shares his taste and influence with other great songwriters, including one who immortalised "Times A-Changin'."
And so we'll weep new life
Come, the all-important morning...
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