New Year's Eve
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
It has been a long time since I found a scripture resonating so deeply with my own mind and heart, but on this, the last day of 2016, Qoholeth, the Preacher, speaks for me on nearly every level.
This book is one of the most "Eastern" in the canon, reflecting a spirituality and philosophy more in tune with Buddhism, Taoism, and the like than our more familiar Western ways of thinking.
What Qoholeth is trying to tell us is that everything passes. What you experience now will soon enough become something else. If you are in a great time, note it will pass, and, therefore, keep your head. You will need your sobriety soon enough. If you are in an awful time, note it will pass. It will not last forever. There is another day coming. You can endure. The point is to not fix on anything. Relax. Breathe. Something else is coming, everything has its season, and we can face all knowing their inherent finitude.
I like that.
2016 has been an interesting year. I have begun a new work in a vastly different place from what I have always known. I have met wonderful new people. There have been new challenges and many moments of wondering just what I was doing. There have been two trips across the country in a U-Haul pulling a car, once with a dog. There have been several trips of lugging all of our stuff from one storage unit to apartment to home. There has been one child flying far off to the other side of the world, while the other has literally lost herself in the woods to find her deepest core working with kids who really need to find a new path. Alison has become a parish pastor again for the first time in 20 years. Then, there is the world. My goodness. Where to begin. Aleppo. The Presidential election. Terrorist atrocities. And, again--Aleppo, the Presidential election, terrorist atrocities. And, again...
Is the record stuck?
Kids, ask your parents about the old box record players we had in our rooms. You'd put a disk of vinyl on there, drop a needle, and music would flow. Then the needle would hit a flaw--the dreaded scratch. The needle would stick, repeating the same three notes again and again and again and again, until you rose and lifted the needle further into the song, missing a chunk.
Yes. 2016 bore a stickly similarity to that skipping needle.
Qoholeth reminds us that it is not really so. It will pass. It will fade. Something else is coming. Don't get stuck in the groove. The new year is really new.
Relax.
Breathe.
Focus.
Arthur Brooks, commentator for The New York Times, offered a gentle reminder of a way to deal with the New Year--think small ("To Make the World Better, Think Small," 12/31/16). The world is vast. But our part of it is actually quite intimate. Focus there. See the person directly before you. Engage, as Capt. Picard always ordered the Star Trek crew to do. It is in these small interactions that we actually foment change and transformation. A person erases all stereotypes because we actually see, hear, and learn who they are. The homeless woman has a PhD, but also schizophrenia, leading her to the street, but with a brilliant kindness that still fires within her. The Republican (or Democrat) is not a concrete ideologue, but a friend, colleague, and surprisingly intriguing person trying to make the best of things as they come, albeit in a manner different from one's own.
The more we are able to be in this place, with eyes and hearts wide open, the more able we will be to ride the shifting seas of all that passes.
That is what Qoholeth was pointing to because in his eyes that was the way to suddenly discover the eternity of God with us.
And in that, there is peace.
It has been a long time since I found a scripture resonating so deeply with my own mind and heart, but on this, the last day of 2016, Qoholeth, the Preacher, speaks for me on nearly every level.
This book is one of the most "Eastern" in the canon, reflecting a spirituality and philosophy more in tune with Buddhism, Taoism, and the like than our more familiar Western ways of thinking.
What Qoholeth is trying to tell us is that everything passes. What you experience now will soon enough become something else. If you are in a great time, note it will pass, and, therefore, keep your head. You will need your sobriety soon enough. If you are in an awful time, note it will pass. It will not last forever. There is another day coming. You can endure. The point is to not fix on anything. Relax. Breathe. Something else is coming, everything has its season, and we can face all knowing their inherent finitude.
I like that.
2016 has been an interesting year. I have begun a new work in a vastly different place from what I have always known. I have met wonderful new people. There have been new challenges and many moments of wondering just what I was doing. There have been two trips across the country in a U-Haul pulling a car, once with a dog. There have been several trips of lugging all of our stuff from one storage unit to apartment to home. There has been one child flying far off to the other side of the world, while the other has literally lost herself in the woods to find her deepest core working with kids who really need to find a new path. Alison has become a parish pastor again for the first time in 20 years. Then, there is the world. My goodness. Where to begin. Aleppo. The Presidential election. Terrorist atrocities. And, again--Aleppo, the Presidential election, terrorist atrocities. And, again...
Is the record stuck?
Kids, ask your parents about the old box record players we had in our rooms. You'd put a disk of vinyl on there, drop a needle, and music would flow. Then the needle would hit a flaw--the dreaded scratch. The needle would stick, repeating the same three notes again and again and again and again, until you rose and lifted the needle further into the song, missing a chunk.
Yes. 2016 bore a stickly similarity to that skipping needle.
Qoholeth reminds us that it is not really so. It will pass. It will fade. Something else is coming. Don't get stuck in the groove. The new year is really new.
Relax.
Breathe.
Focus.
Arthur Brooks, commentator for The New York Times, offered a gentle reminder of a way to deal with the New Year--think small ("To Make the World Better, Think Small," 12/31/16). The world is vast. But our part of it is actually quite intimate. Focus there. See the person directly before you. Engage, as Capt. Picard always ordered the Star Trek crew to do. It is in these small interactions that we actually foment change and transformation. A person erases all stereotypes because we actually see, hear, and learn who they are. The homeless woman has a PhD, but also schizophrenia, leading her to the street, but with a brilliant kindness that still fires within her. The Republican (or Democrat) is not a concrete ideologue, but a friend, colleague, and surprisingly intriguing person trying to make the best of things as they come, albeit in a manner different from one's own.
The more we are able to be in this place, with eyes and hearts wide open, the more able we will be to ride the shifting seas of all that passes.
That is what Qoholeth was pointing to because in his eyes that was the way to suddenly discover the eternity of God with us.
And in that, there is peace.
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