Faith Works 3-23-13
Jeff Gill
Pieces scattered across the landscape
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At just after 7:00 am on Wednesday, the Sun crossed the equator, and the vernal equinox marked a balance point for this half of the year, when day and night are equal, hence "equinox." This is the spring variety, so not the autumnal but the vernal equinox.
Over a thousand years ago, at the Synod of Whitby, England joined the Roman method for calculating Easter, the great celebration of the Christian calendar. This meant that the Sunday of Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. Next week we have a full moon, and on March 31st we have Easter, showing that St. Wilfrid's computation still governs our modern calendar, or at least the one for our candy purchases.
Just over two thousand years ago, a mysterious Greek workshop created an amazing bronze mechanism, about the size of a hat box, with gears and a crank. You could set the device to your current date, or any future (or former) date, and see on the analog display where the planets were, when the next Olympic or Pythian games would be held, and even calculate when eclipses would occur, along with the more everyday (or every year) events of solstices and equinoxes, and the phases of the moon.
The Antikythera Mechanism is the name of this object, discovered in dives on a Greek shipwreck that was carrying treasure and attractions to Rome for a parade to honor Julius Caesar. The statuary was the main attraction, and the corroded pieces of bronze gears were considered an anomaly until their possible practical uses were considered in just the last few decades. Once looked at closely, these linked gears constitute a device of which a lead scientist said "This device is extraordinary . . . The astronomy is exactly right . . . in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."
This morning, I'm going to meet with anyone who shows up at the Great Circle Museum at 9:00 am, and go for a hike looking for pieces of a device built about the same time as the Antikythera Mechanism, and only became truly appreciated about the same time as scholars realized what that Grecian gadget was really good for.
Not small and compact and metal, but four square miles and made of earth – yet doing much the same sort of calculation and prediction and observation they were doing then in Greece. It's the Newark Earthworks, and while we know mostly the big pieces (Great Circle & Octagon), there are small bits and chunks which help us understand the whole all the better.
We'll start and end at the museum there just off of Rt. 79, walk a little over three miles, and cross lots of busy streets (at crosswalks, looking both ways!). But we will wrestle with mysteries of time and history and the cosmos as we wander.
Religious observances take place at very particular moments of time, but almost always are intended to help we finite, mortal persons to find our connection to the infinite, to the eternal. Specific dates and the role of seasons as they pass don't get in the way of a more timeless perspective, but may actually be the only way we can come to understand what, and who is beyond time itself.
You have to know where you stand in order to comprehend the horizon, and where your journey is going. Maybe you need to know what time it is right now to figure out where your future is heading, with or without a full moon next week to guide you.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's also the tour leader this time. Tell him where you found pieces fitting together at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
