“To everything – turn, turn, turn,” sang The Byrds in the catchy 1959 Pete Seeger song invoking the Book of Ecclesiastes . “There is a season… and a time to every purpose under heaven… a time to gain, a time to lose.”
Boy, do we know it!
After England’s disappointing exit from the World Cup last week at the hands of their arch-rivals Argentina, it is hard to escape the conclusion that when the opportunity came to advance to their first final in 60 years, England blew it. Or rather, Thomas Tuchel, England’s German-born coach, blew it with his bizarre decision in the 72nd minute to swap Antony Gordon for a defender in an attempt to protect England’s narrow 1-0 lead.
We all know what happened next. Scenting blood, Lionel Messi upped the tempo and in two moments of footballing genius assisted Argentina to two goals and a place in tonight’s final with Spain. In psychological terms, you could say Tuchel misjudged the moment whereas Messi rose to it.
Or as an ontologist friend puts it, “One was operating in ‘Kairos time’, the other wasn’t”.
From the Kairos Palestine II document calling for an end to the “genocide” in Gaza and incursions by Israeli settlers, to the Kairos collective of theologists, academics and journalists calling for serious engagement with climate change, the notion of Kairos time is everywhere.
As the authors of “The Dawn of Everything”, which challenges the notion of Western civilization as a story of lineal progress and calls for a profound shift in our thinking to meet the challenge of climate change, put it: “We appear to be heading into what the ancient Greeks called Kairos, a window of opportunity when our capacity for change is put to the test.”
Andy Burnham, who will become Prime Minister tomorrow, invoked a similar spirit of Kairos in his first speech as leader of the Labour Party on Friday. Addressing colleagues at a special session of the Trade Union Congress in central London, he promised to break with the “deindustrialisation of the 1980s” and neo-liberalism, describing his victory in the Makerfield by-election as “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years”.
“It will take us to a country where life is more affordable and all people and places are lifted from where they are now,” he promised, before adding:
“This is the moment to speak for all parts of the country and unite people in a common cause.”
In Greek myth, the god Kairos personifies exactly this sense of an auspicious or opportune moment. The youngest son of Zeus, he is usually depicted with a forelock at the front of his head and shorter hair at the back and sides (think a Greek Erling Haaland).
During the Olympiad, Kairos’s altar stood at the entrance to the stadium opposite Hermes, the god of speed. But whereas Hermes is shown with wings on his heels, Kairos also has wings on his shoulders and balances a set of scales in his arms.
On sighting Kairos, athletes at the Olympiad thought they could steal a march on rivals by grabbing hold of his forelock as they passed, much as a runner grabs a baton during a relay race. However, the timing had to be just so since with one kick of his winged feet Kairos would be gone and the moment would have passed.
Another analogy is with weaving and archery. Think of the moment when the weaver draws the yarn through a gap that opens in a warp in a piece of cloth. Or the legendary “trial of the bow” in The Odyssey where Homer’s hero must shoot an arrow cleanly through the aligned eyelets of 12 axe heads in order to prove he’s Penelope’s returning husband and the king of Ithaca.
It is the marshalling of Odysseus’s talent at precisely the right moment in time and place that dictates the outcome of Homer’s epic poem and, by extension, other turning points in history.
For England, that window opened at precisely 55 minutes into their semi-final with Argentina when Morgan Rogers crossed the ball from the right and Gordon stole into into the Argentine penalty area from the left to sweep the ball into the net, and it closed when Argentina equalised 30 minutes later. Although England later redeemed themselves - and to a lesser extent Tuchel - with their surprise 6-4 victory over France on Saturday, there is no telling when or where such an opportunity might present itself again.
Nor is there any way of knowing whether Burnham has what it takes to grasp the opportunity afforded him by his victory in Makerfield to deliver on his radical agenda to devolve power and wealth to the regions. However, in recognising that in order for that to happen, it has to happen now rather than later, Burnham has taken the crucial first step.
Whether there is still time to reverse climate change and provide justice to Palestinians driven from their homes in Gaza, is harder to say. Certainly, when it comes to climate change our efforts have been faltering and, so far, have fallen far short of what is required. Despite governments’ repeated pledges to cut carbon emissions, human-induced global heating is currently running at 1.37°C above pre-industrial levels. Unless something changes quickly, it is hard to see how we can avoid breaching the critical 1.5°C threshold by 2030.
At time of writing, an end to the war in Gaza appears similarly unlikely. The Palestinian Christian Ecumenical Initiative (PCEI) drafted the first Kairos document calling for Palestinians to be allowed to “live in dignity” in their homeland in 2009. Since then, animosities between the warring parties and the loss of life in Gaza has only worsened. However, argues the PCEI, as awful as the decades-long animosities have been, something shifted with the October 7th Hamas attacks and Israel’s devastating and, arguably, criminal response.
“We live now in a time of genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement unfolding before the eyes of the world,” write the authors of Kairos II. “This moment - a moment of truth - demands from us a new stand unlike any before it.”
Many will disagree with the characterisation of Israel’s assault on Gaza as a “genocide”, let alone other parts of the document crudely portraying Israel as an “apartheid, colonialist-settler state.”
But if the last few years and the 23rd FIFA World Cup have taught us anything, it is that fine words and heartfelt promises will only get you so far. It’s what you do in that moment on the pitch when Kairos suddenly presents himself that matters.
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