THE TOWN CLOCK
James Ishmael Ford
2 January 2005

The Text
Let me respectfully remind you,
Life and Death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken! Take heed!
Do not squander your lives….
Traditional Evening Gatha at Zen Retreats

I thought you should know that Alex isn’t the only one of our youth who have mastered the art of clocks, clock manufacture and clock repair. I heard recently about a couple of parents from our community who went to visit their daughter at her large Midwestern university. Parents and daughter rendezvoused after her last afternoon class around three o’clock. They took what was now an insider’s tour of the campus, then went out to dinner, after which even though it was getting late, our intrepid student wanted to show her folks what she’d done with her rooms.

And indeed, it was quite nice. A considerable improvement over what they saw when they dropped her off at the beginning of the school year some three months earlier. But one new feature really confused them. Her mom said, “Dear, why do you have that large gong hanging from the wall.” To which their daughter replied, “That’s not a gong, mom. That’s a talking clock.”

Her dad made a dad noise and said, “How’s that?” Without another word the young woman picked up a very large striker that was leaning against the wall and hit the gong once with considerable force. Then from the next room an irate voice yelled out, “What are you doing? Don’t you know its eleven-forty-five!”

Now that doesn’t hold a candle to what our own Alex Bullett has done with clocks, with our Society’s tower clock, known for many years as the and I think that’s with a capital “T,” the town clock. Roberta Humez has done incredible historical research on our bells and our clock. We’ve heard the story of the bells last year. The clock was built and installed in the tower by the E. Howard Clock Company in 1916, although at the time its full functions were not enabled. It wasn’t until the next year that we can say we had a Westminster Quarter Chimer and Hour Striker. As I’ve suggested in the years that followed it became unofficially West Newton’s “town clock.” This continued to be so pretty much for fifty years. However somewhere in the 1960s the clock failed to work. That was as the historically minded among us know a nadir point in our Society’s resources and for the next thirty-five or forty years the clock stood timeless.

It wasn’t until last year that Alex Bullett decided it was time to take matters in hand. Alex was a youth member of our Board of Trustees at the time. But it was while he was working the Christmas tree sales that he stared up at the clock and its frozen hands and thought, “Perhaps that’s my senior project.”

He brought the subject up with a number of his teachers; some encouraging, others noting this was a rather larger project than most seniors at Roxbury Latin tended to take on. However one of the Chemistry professors, Mike Pojman, himself a devotee of the mysteries of horology, offered to be Alex’s advisor if he wanted to take on the project. With permission from the school Alex then went to the Board of Trustees with his scheme. After listening to his pitch Alex was officially authorized to go ahead so long as he didn’t exceed his budget. This being a good and wise board, of course Alex wasn’t actually given a budget.

He set about on several fronts. Mr Pojman was an enormous help, teaching him quite a bit and pointing him toward further information about clocks and clock making. He spent time with Roberta learning the clock’s history. And then his father made a critical connection, introducing Alex to a colleague at Polaroid, John Meschter. John’s day job is mechanical engineer. His passion is clocks. John had even spent time in Switzerland learning the art of watch making. Together with John, Bob Persons and his dad Julian, Alex says he really only helped, but I see Alex deeply involved in every aspect of this enterprise, this remarkable team slowly, meticulously rebuilt our clock.

Meanwhile Alex spent a lot of time on the phone and harassing people in person and fairly quickly he raised five hundred dollars. However this would be nowhere near enough money for the project. Many necessary parts were useless or simply missing. And there was no ordering them from a warehouse. They simply didn’t exist. That’s about when the guys at Polaroid’s machine shop heard about the project and decided they wanted to meet Alex. Out of that meeting and on their own time they began to make the necessary but oh so specialized parts. Alex’s best guess is they ended up donating about ten thousand dollars worth of work and parts. I certainly hope Alex never decides he wants to sell me something.

While there are still some glitches to work through, the clock is now just about there. As we have Alex only through this afternoon before he has to return to Stanford where he’s finishing up his freshman year, we thought this a particularly appropriate time to thank him for what he’s done.

(A time to thank Alex)

Now just a brief reflection on the mystery of time and how we live within it and either are used by it or use it to live fully. We stand at the New Year in our western calendar, and these days pretty much the world calendar. We mark out the passage of our lives in various ways. Privately we mark significant events, birthdays, weddings, deaths. Publicly we observe feasts and even in our secular culture fasts that address the power of our communal lives. This is the human way, to notice and observe.

So, of course, in this enterprise of noticing and understanding, we parse ever farther down from year and month and week and day to hour and minute and second. Hence clocks. Hence town and church clocks. While not so critical in our era of watches, where pretty much everyone can count the moment at the tilt of a wrist, these public markers, our church and town clocks are also very important; as important in their own ways as that larger marker of calendar.

As I said this is our New Year. Most of us here know it’s the ancient Roman god Janus who gives us the name January. Janus had two faces, one looking backwards and the other forwards. He’s the divinity of gates and doors; entrances and exits; and so among other things Janus stands for the holy enterprise of reflection, noticing, making clear, understanding – and from there correcting actions.

The New Year is a time in our cultural inheritance where we are especially invited to reflect more deeply. We meet this invitation in varying degree. Some of us assess our lives, some fewer make resolutions to change one thing or another, and, really, rather fewer keep them. I suggest this year, let’s think a little deeper about this, and look at what those resolutions could be, and why it can be so important to try not only to make them, but to follow through. These resolutions are the enterprise of improvement, making new, making better. They birth hope and possibility. They are the gates of transformation.

Today shadowed as it is by the specter of that horrific tragedy in south Asia, this time set aside within our culture for us to reflect on who and what we are, is particularly appropriate. But a warning. James Carroll in his recent Globe column suggests how a “clock is a sacrament of the passage of time, a way to note the movement of one day into the next, a method of location in the otherwise uncharted ocean whose two horizons are the past and the future.” Carroll then and very importantly adds a caution. He notes “Mariners are fond of saying, especially when the ship unexpectedly runs aground, that the chart is not the sea; similarly, the clock is not time.”

I’d suggest for our purposes that we consider our resolutions less about creating lists of things to do or for some of us list of things to refrain from doing – that it’s about a shift in perspective and style. Recalling the proof of our pudding is in how we engage our lives; what resolutions can we find that address that? In the flow of time, pouring forth from its unknown source and tumbling down to the great sea; what are we going to do, how are we going to act in the world? Time is precious. The clocks of our lives point to that deeper thing, that headlong rush, that caution not to waste our time. Time is an astonishing gift. But it passes. It passes away in a blink of an eye. What are we going to do with it? How are we going to be in this world?

The way through isn’t that difficult, at least in theory. Our transformation of heart is found in not turning away, not turning away from what is right in front of us. Here we find our healing vision of oneness, our deep knowing we all belonging to a single family. Of course it’s more than that, as well. At the same time we see our commonality we should also see how we are different, you and I. I think of that horror in south Asia. Perhaps we all do. Certainly today some are doing well and others are not. If we allow our perspective to be big - we can see within the flow of time we are all equal, and yet we are also each different. We’re living in different places with different gifts and certainly within different situations. It is in attending to this mysterious flux that we begin to find hope and possibility.

However our analysis is not enough. Our ideas about all this are not enough. It doesn’t matter how good the analysis is. We need to hold the larger understanding that the map is not the territory; that we are all so much larger than we ever imagine. So, at the same time where we need to hold the maps and read them, to listen to the clock tolling, and recall our precious and rapidly passing our lives are; we need to understand this itself is just a beginning. From this place of possibility and hope we should make our resolutions.

What are your resolutions? Out of that knowing we are one and yet separate, that astonishing tension and creative possibility within the universe; what do you hope to accomplish this year? Knowing your precious uniqueness and the suffering of others who are after all, all family, what will you do this year to heal hurt and create possibility? Who will you be? As the clock tolls it hours reminding us how precious and passing our lives are; what do you resolve to do?

If we do this, if we really truly take on this project of reflection, of understanding and from that doing something; then who knows, we might all find ourselves following Alex’s example and taking on the small and great projects of the world – healing, helping, serving. And there’s a payoff. Here, as St Theresa of Avila, one of the great teachers of the west once observed, here we discover “All the way to heaven is heaven.” Here we find our work. Here we find who we are. Here we find what we need to do. And it is for this, I suggest, the clock tolls.

Amen