New Year:
Those New Year customs we heard concerned themselves with thanksgiving and expressions of gratitude, starting the year afresh, with a clean slate, good health and good luck. Underneath such rituals lies the recognition that we humans cannot control everything that will happen to us in 2007, despite our best efforts and, perhaps, our deepest desires. And so we hope that certain actions, symbolic at best, will do the job for us.
On the other hand, while there is much we cannot control, there is much that we can. New Year is a time for looking at that as well. The Romans believed in a god, Janus, (for whom the month January is named), who had two faces: one looking forward and one looking backward. That’s what New Year is--a looking forward and a looking backward. As at any time of transition, there is a stock taking and a resolution making. As we heard of New Year customs, it is a sweeping out of demons from the past and an opening of doors to the future. We humans need, periodically, to take stock, to see what worked and what didn’t and we need to make resolution, or intention, for the time to come. It ’s a recognition of responsibility for the parts of life we do have some power over.
I see New Year as a kind of serenity prayer. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” We need to believe that we can begin again, that we are not prisoners of the past. At the same time life is not a magic slate that can be wiped clean whenever we have a mind to, or however much we may want to. In that sense New Year is something of an artificial construction. “ . .. in truth, there are no pure beginnings, only continuations, lives flowing into lives, age flowing into age. We didn’t leave our youth behind and find a kind of maturity at a particular time. We don’t awake one morning and find ourselves middle-aged all at once. . . The world goes slowly and what beginnings there are are lost in the ongoingness of time.” (Charles S Stephen) Antoine St Exupery said, “To live is to be slowly born . . . Illumination is vision suddenly granted at the end of a long and gradual preparation.”
"It is no ordinary thing to undertake the assessment of one's life; to take a backward look over the way that one has come, and to remember. To remember how it was with oneself a year ago-with what hopes and enthusiasms and visions one greeted the beginning of the year. Or to remember how one dragged one's feet into the year, and how as the months moved into view many things changed so that there is in some of our hearts quiet rejoicing that life has fallen for us in easy places. For some others there's the simple anguish that comes from the frustrations which were unanticipated, which had to be endured, and there is left a residue of weariness and heartache for which there does not seem to be any solace or any comfort. It is good to be here and to feel our way into each other's presence, each other’s experiencing, each other's heart and mind, and in that feeling to sense the strength which comes from the shoulder that touches and the heart that cares. " (Howard Thurman) How do we become Janus? How do we reflect upon ourselves, see ourselves? Take responsibility for that over which we have greater power? Meet with courage, strength and even delight that over which we have little power? This is no easy task. The Roman orator Cicero is well known for saying O tempora! O mores! Oh the times! Oh the morals, the customs! Increasingly our times, our ways of life encourage us to take less and less responsibility. We disrespect our minds with ideological blinders, not taking the time for over broad analysis of ideas, with simplistic, black and white approaches to complex situations, with a judgmental, retributive morality. We disrupt the trust essential to keeping any social fabric intact with our “spinning” the facts, making promises we cannot keep, lying. We attribute our behavior to that which lies outside of us, as if we were possessed in some way. We minimize the effects of our actions, or we deny them outright. We blame everyone and everything else. In our increasingly uncivil society the concept of responsibility fades. On the level of commerce, if, for example, you call Time Warner Cable Company and ask for a TV hook-up they will ask you if you want the basic package, the sports package, the whopper package, the porn package, the children’s package. . . I’m exaggerating but they, like many businesses, expect the customer to know the details of what they offer. So when you say “Huh?” to their queries, they become a little brusque. Remember the last time you tried to update your cell phone service? Or buy a computer? It’s as if we expected our visitors and guests to walk in the door already knowing about Unitarian Universalism and then treat them with impatience when they don’t. Or on the personal level, how often do we expect other people to know what we want, what we need, or what we can and can’t do without having to tell them? Then, when they don’t meet our expectations or fulfill our needs, how often do we become annoyed or feel misused? One more example and then I’ll stop ranting. It has happened to me recently that two different, non-congregational people called me because they wanted something from me. That’s fine. They left messages on my machine and I called each one back. Both callers picked up their phone, acknowledged who I was and what they wanted, then told me it was not a good time to talk, couldn’t I call them back at some other time. Is this serious?
This abrogation of responsibility on multiple levels: the intellectual, the civil, the political, the commercial, the personal is not healthy for us, our community, our society, our nation, our world. It is a symptom, I think, of an increasing inability to understand the world or each other from any point of view other than our own. An increasing unwillingness to recognize the different realities we experience. It mocks diversity and undercuts empathy. On a basic ethical level, this is a diminishment of our humanity. How can we become Janus? How can we reflect upon ourselves, see ourselves, see one another, see ourselves in relation to one another? Only upon reflection can we take responsibility for that over which we have power. Reflection is a looking inward and a looking outward. When we look at the inward mirror who do we see? Do we know? Are we aware of what we think? What we want? What we feel? What expectations and assumptions we bring to the table? What’ s really bothering us? What makes us happy? Are we aware of the places in which we have wounds, and how they affect us? Do we give ourselves the space to know what’s going on inside? Or do we live on automatic pilot? When we look beyond our own mirror to the one that others hold up for us, who do we see? The responses of the people in our lives tell us about ourselves. Albeit we take this information with a grain of salt. After all, how someone responds to me is about both of us–him/her and me. My job is to separate out the strands. What’s mine and what is his/hers. If one person tells us on any specific day that we’re grouchy, well, we may have been. Or he/she may have been. But if eight people tell us fairly regularly that we’re grouchy, well, maybe grouchy describes us. We learn about ourselves by considering no particular response, but by awareness of the overall response we receive from the majority of people. What’s the message we get, over and over? There might be something to reflect upon there.
Only when we can see and know ourselves can we see and know others as free beings rather than extensions of ourselves. I had a conversation with Matthew, my son, yesterday in which we discussed his coming up to Kingston this weekend. This was a conversation ripe for disaster. I want to see him. He doesn ’t want to come. If I’m unaware of my own feelings and expectations as I receive this news, I might say, with anger, “What do you mean you don’t want to see your own mother?” Or I might say, with a sigh, “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll be alone on New Year’s Eve eating pickled herring and gagging. But you go and have a good time.” Or maybe this: “Why don’t you want to come here? I know, you hate this house. You hate Kingston. You hate the dog. You hate me.” If I’m unaware of what’s happening inside me and take no responsibility for my reactions, I’m going to dump them out all over him in a quasi-unconscious attempt to control him. At the same time I’m also unaware of him except as someone who should do what I want him to do. Happily, our conversation stumbled along to a good place. I was aware of my own disappointment and I resisted the urge to assume I knew why he would not come. Instead, I asked him to explain what he wanted to do. Turns out he simply wants to stay home. It’s not about me at all. It’s not about me. I can be with him wanting to do that. I can be with me in disappointment. Reflection is inward; reflection is outward. When we can self-reflect we can begin to see and know, not only ourselves, but others as well.
When we do become Janus, looking back and looking forward, looking within and looking without, we find out how much power we have. When we look carefully we will undoubtedly see things we’d rather not see. Our own weaknesses, the times we messed up, our impatience, our arrogance, our anger, our incompetence, our fear, our thoughtlessness, our insensitivity, our violence. Shame and/or embarrassment at not living up to our own expectations, or behaving in ways that run counter to the self-identities we carry around can cause us not to want to see inside and certainly not to want to take responsibility for those parts of ourselves. But what if we did? “Imagine how many deep breaths you would need to take. Imagine how many doors you’d have to knock on, how many phone calls you’d have to make, how many letters, how many lunches and coffees, how many awkward moments with your children and your parents, and with strangers (that cashier to whom you spoke so sharply). Awkward is irrelevant. The task is not about comfort, it is about . . . wholeness and holiness. . . Imagine this. The task is . . . ownership. . . . I did this. I said this to you, and it was wrong. I neglected this. I botched this. . . . This is the truth in which both of us are living. . . (Victoria Safford) Responsibility. And with it comes power. The strength of honesty with compassion and the power to make changes. The opportunity to put intentionality in our lives. Pin our shortcomings on the scarecrow, but own them as ours. Burn them, and resolve to learn how to do better next time.
Susan Griffin has put it this way: "The old woman who was wicked in her honesty asked questions of her mirror. When she was small she asked, Why am I afraid of the dark? Why do I feel I will be devoured? And her mirror answered, Because you have reason to fear. You are small and you might be devoured. Because you are nothing but a shadow, a wisp, a seed and you might be lost in the dark. And so she became large. Too large for devouring. From that tiny seed of a self a mighty form grew and now it was she who cast shadows. But after a while she came to the mirror again and asked, Why am I afraid of my bigness? And the mirror answered, because you are big. There is no disputing who you are. And it is not easy for you to hide. And so she began to stop hiding. She announced her presence. She even took joy in it. But still, when she looked in her mirror, she saw herself and was frightened and she asked the mirror why. Because, the mirror said, no one else sees what you see, no one else can tell you if what you see is true. So after that she decided to believe her own eyes.
Once, when she felt herself growing older, she said to the mirror, Why am I afraid of birthdays? Because, the mirror said, there is something you have always wanted to do which you have been afraid of doing and you know time is running out. And she ran from the mirror as quickly as she could because she knew in that moment she was not afraid and she wanted to seize the time. Over time, she and her mirror became friends, and the mirror would weep for her in compassion when her fears were real. Finally, her reflection asked her, What do you still fear? And the old woman answered, I still fear death. I still fear change. And her mirror agreed. Yes, they are frightening. Death is a closed door, the mirror flourished, and change is a door hanging open."
We don’t know what doors we will encounter in 2007. But whether opening or closing, flapping in the wind, stuck or automatic, solid or hollow, may we be aware of them and who we are as we approach them. May we embrace responsibility. May we find the courage to change what we can change and the wisdom to make peace with what we cannot control. May we remove the cloak of invisibility that shrouds us from ourselves and from one another and take honest and accurate stock of our lives. May we use this opportunity to name intentions for the future and live into them. What better, more hospitable place to do this than here? What better time to do it than now? Let the eyes of our eyes be open. Let the ears of our ears hear. (from e.e. cummings) Happy New Year. May it be so.
Closing words: Stanley Kunitz I have walked through many lives, Some of them my own, And I am not who I was, Though some principle of being Abides . . . I am not done with my changes.