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Redeeming the Time
To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, how
ever incredulously
The Time Being is, in a sense,
the most trying time of all.
…………‥
In the meantime
There are bills to be paid,
machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the
Time Being to redeem
From insignificance…
—W.H. Auden
For the Time Being
Somehow we do have a letdown after the festival of Christmas and the bacchanal of New Year’s. Perhaps it is then we realize how dark and cold the winter has become and how long it might be until spring. Soon, however, we get caught up again in the inexorable rhythms of daily life.
With the frantic pace of contemporary society, few of us feel we have time enough for reading. Ironically, our present age is an era of mind-numbing instant Internet pastimes and 83 channels of very insignificant cable TV. It’s an age when a magazine like British Heritage ought to be significant as well as entertaining. I hope we are both.
Indeed, it is a challenging assignment to keep your finger on the pulse of the past and the present of an entire Anglo-American civilization and how they connect. In this issue, we connect with the earliest arrival of Christianity to Scotland in the 4th century, and with English landscape politics in the 21st century. We also visit with one of the most important Archbishops of Canterbury in the last century, and spend midsummer’s eve at Stonehenge—standing watch over the ancient monuments for English Heritage. Talk about connecting past and present.
Sadly, we conclude in this issue our “Great Migrations’ series on the four great British colonial immigrations to America’s Atlantic shores in the 17th and 18th centuries. Together it was these religious and economically inspired movements of courageous people from every corner of Britain to the first coastal colonies that created the American identity. It’s a series that is important, as well, I hope, as entertaining. In fact, the story that “Great Migrations’ tells of our British heritage should be required reading in high school American history classes. How is any generation or people to be centered if it does not know from whence it comes?
As it happens, we will continue the story of British immigration to a young America in another form beginning in our next issue. In the 19th century, it was industry that changed the world and brought new generations of economic migrants from Britain to a land of opportunity. I’ll explain while we wander “Around Our Sceptered Isle.”
To actually be read and not merely another colorful addition to the coffee table is an admirable aspiration for any journal. British Heritage may not command the immediate attention due paying the bills and learning irregular verbs, but we shall try hard to redeem a few delightful hours. Enjoy.
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