Finding time's beginning and ending

London, July 29. A.D. 2002.

Why, when I leave the stove for five minutes, does it burn every time, and yet a watched pot never boils? Why does a young child's summer holiday feel endless, and a trip seems over before it started?

St. Augustine of Hippo in the 5th century posed a riddle: "What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me, but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled."

Albert Einstein said, "When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes; when you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours. That's relativity."

Plato called time "the moving image of eternity." Then, if time is the image, eternity is the reflected reality, I hope and pray.

Physicists and poets, historians and theologians all agree: Time had a beginning. And time will have an end. Time began when the world began, at God's word of command, at the Big Bang, or the Genesis Event. Whether you use the vocabulary of the Bible or of science, time is created. Created, it is a creature. As am I. It may be a shape-shifter, it may be awesome in power, a veritable principality of the universe. But we are fellow creatures and we have a relationship, of struggle, of acceptance, of creative conflict, of some grace when we let go.

I am returning from my summer study trip on the subject of "Time and Eternity, the Cosmic Odyssey." It will be good to be home.

My last Sunday in England I am in London, in a hotel near King's Cross where the train from Cambridge deposited me yesterday. Rising early, I take one of those marvelous double-decker red buses south to the Thames River at Black Friars Bridge. I walk along the river in the neighborhood of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

My last night in Cambridge I saw "Antony and Cleopatra" at Emmanuel College. The Bard's disparaging look back at classical Rome revealed the same combination of lust and ambition that wastes wisdom and judgment to ruin great men and women. The plague of people in power in his own 16th century, and in ours today.

I promised my friend, the engineer on Cape's new bridge under construction, that I would look at the Millennium Bridge. I am not disappointed. Elegantly dancing on only two legs (the others take four or five or more to span the river), it provides those who slow down long enough to walk a wonderful view of London.

Looking far upstream, I see the Crown's church, Westminster Abbey. The current church is 700 years old. It was built on the site of the grave of Edward the Confessor, first patron saint of England. William the Bastard of Normandy had himself crowned "the Conqueror" and King of England and Normandy on Edward's still-fresh tomb. And his heirs set to building a beautiful gothic church in that place. All subsequent monarchs have been crowned there, and 13 queens and 15 kings have been buried there.

Above the High Altar of the abbey is inscribed, "The kingdom of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." This monument to the vision of Christendom's kingdom, power and glory cannot be read without irony in this post-modern age.

Hundreds of thousands, mostly Americans, pour in to visit this place. In the abbey there is the statesmen's aisle, with monuments to Walpole, Peel, Disraeli, Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Prince Albert and Winston Churchill. And the poet's corner, starting with Chaucer, containing tombs or monuments to so many, Donne, Herbert, Blake, Eliot, Dickens. The tourists crowd and elbow to see this sight before it is covered by the sands of time. Time that moves so quickly no one can remember their history, or take time to read the writings of their poets.

London, from the Millennium Bridge, reveals a still vital city. I count 30 great construction cranes from where I stand. The streets are full of people of every language, nation, race and tribe. If you squint you can see the City of God glimpsed by Augustine.

For a moment I am in its thrall. The bridge leads me directly into the approach to St. Paul's Cathedral on the hill above the Thames.

For 1,400 years on this spot, Christians have gathered here to sing God's praises and to feast on a foretaste of the eternal banquet. This is the great city's church, the nation's church, and in many ways shares the distinction with its Catholic counterpart, St. Peter's in Rome, as the central gathering place of celebration and mourning for Western Christianity. The sheer scale and beauty of the architecture and the sublime music of organ and choir enable visitors to sense serenity in the bustling city of modern life.

Before matins, I sit in the shady church yard -- the place of rest -- near the monument to those who survived the blitz in the Battle of Britain. A life-sized statue of Charles Wesley, "poet, priest, prophet," stands watch.

The bells of St. Paul's begin to ring the changes. For 15 minutes they sing across the quiet Sunday morning city. This is God's day, this is where time and eternity meet. All are invited. But, unlike Monday through Saturday, when anyone can pay to enter, on this day, admission is free, but only those who come to worship may enter.

Towner is rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Cape Girardeau.