The deepness of time, the deepness of me, the deepness of God.
BY ADRIENNE THOMPSON
This piece is published in the summer 21 issue of Refresh Journal, ‘The Deep’.
‘Deep time’ is an evocative phrase coined by John McPhee to express the insignificance of a human lifespan compared to the ages upon ages of forming and unforming and reforming the earth.
My four-year-old grandson can tell me all about dinosaurs. He patiently corrects me when I assign Stegosaurus to the same period as Triceratops. But millions of years are not really a concept for him.
I talk to him about his great-grandfather. ‘Did he live in the olden days?’ asks Billy. Yes.’ ‘Before the dinosaurs or after the dinosaurs?’
I smile, but am I any wiser than he is? Dinosaurs, Gondwana land, earth’s beginnings in the unimaginable deepness of time are equally unfathomable to me, I just know more of the words.
Abandoning the geological concept, I continue to play with the phrase.
Deep time.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand I’ve had little sense of that. A thin layer of vaguely known story lies lightly over the landscape. History here began with James Cook, the bold and clever captain. In the shadowy background were Māori people, insignficant to the story until they, like the mountains, lakes and rivers were discovered by the history-makers.
I have learned differently.
My way into deep time in Aotearoa has been through its landmarks – those islands, mountains, rivers and lakes, discovered and named, not by James Cook or those who followed him but by those who came long before.
I live near the great harbour of Tara – named by the son of Whātonga the Navigator. I look across it to the islands, Matiu and Makaro, named by Kupe’s daughters. When I walk the sacred paths of Tapu-te-ranga, near Island Bay, I remember Hinekiri, Tara’s daughter, the gardener who cultivated kumara there 600 years ago, perhaps.
When I travel up the coast I recognise Kupe’s landing place at the entrance to Porirua harbour. I salute Tūteremoana, the highest point on Kapiti island, and I remember its eponymous Rangatira.
Porirua Harbour by Aidan Wojtas
I wonder if some of the meanings of ‘whakapapa’ find a place in the concept of deep time?
whakapapa
(verb) to lie flat, lay flat.
(verb) to place in layers, lay one upon another, stack flat.
(verb) to recite in proper order (e.g. genealogies, legends, months), recite genealogies.
(noun) genealogy, genealogical table, lineage, descent.
Layer upon layer, pile upon pile, memory, narrative, history, ancestry, putting depth and more depth into my experience of living here in Aotearoa.
Until I became aware of these layers, I experienced a curious blankness. I live here on the far side of the world – and even that terminology is revealing: the far side from where? From Britain, where my ancestry lies, from Asia, my home for 40 years, from Europe and North America that shaped my language, my mythologies, my philosophy, my theology. My body is here but my consciousness is tuned to a different frequency.
My own whakapapa – Scottish and English, European and Christian – is deep inside of me. Oddly, but it’s a very common experience for many who begin to engage with te Reo Māori and te Ao Māori, the more I learn and experience of deep time in Aotearoa, and the more layers I discover here, the more tuned I am to my own whakapapa, to my connections, physical, mental and spiritual, across the world.
Learning my way into the deep time of Aotearoa began with learning a few of the stories, a little of the history of this land, just some of the names of the hills and rivers near me and of the iwi who came and went and beside them. With the learning came the invitation – participate here. I am not merely to know, or even to name, but to acknowledge – to bow – to say hello. To mihi.
E mihi ana ki ngā maunga, ki ngā awa, ki ngā Iwi katoa o tēnei whenua.
I greet the mountains, the rivers and all the peoples of this land. Almost every morning I go outside to acknowledge the sky and earth, the Whārangi range of hills, the Waipāhihi stream, and the Te Atiawa iwi who have the mana whenua here. What was an empty, blank space inside of me now echoes with resonant voices, singing, speaking, telling, talking. Voices from my whakapapa answering the voices from deep time in Aotearoa.
The God of deep time and deep space takes me out of my depth, and I find that I am at home.
Adrienne Thompson offers spiritual direction and supervision in Wellington with a background sound track of tui song and kaka screeches thanks to neighbouring Zealandia sanctuary. Her communities include a Baptist church, an anarchic Christian group, a Treat Action Colletive, fellow learners of te Reo Maori and a wonderful family.
