On Newness

Before us lies a brand, new calendar year. Frankly,  I don’t think that Jan. 1, 2014, holds any more newness than Dec. 31, 2013, did. After all, every day is new and holds the same life streams as the previous day. Still, when a new year begins, we have a psychological invitation to view it as a world of new possibilities, and this is not a bad idea, especially if we have been floundering a bit and could use some new focus.

Definitely invitational...
Some newnesses are definitely invitational. I have a wonderful friend who has built a life of artistic endeavors over several years because she had to find her way back from serious illness, and this path opened before her. Knowing her, I would imagine she will probably get her hair dyed purple again! On the other, hand I also know a family that will be rebuilding its underpinnings after the unexpected passing of a beautiful wife and mother late in 2013. No one would have invited this bit of newness into their lives, but they will tackle it because new life keeps intruding itself into our experiences, like it or not.

Now everything is important...
As for me, I am smiling again at George Burns’ old joke about considering it a good day because he woke up and did not find his name in the obits! And there are times when I think I am beginning to know how he felt. I am not entertaining any flawed fatalisms here; I am simply reminding myself of how precious each breath, each day, each year is. There really are good reasons for getting older, and one of them is that we learn not to take anything for granted. Now everything is important; everyone is worth noticing; every day is piled high with possibilities, and every new year is a golden link in the chain of our own being.

A new threshold...
Here we are, then, at a new threshold, in human terms anyway. There are many doors before us. Some will undoubtedly be quite new before the year is out, with some paths not yet tracked before us.

Might as well get started!

On Celebrations

    

I’m for celebrations…of all kinds…all the way from refined, elegant, special awards presentations to wild and wooly wedding receptions and Christmas lights and bells. I’m for serene and lovely opportunities that feature beautiful offerings of art; I’m for the biggest array of fabulosity that a fireworks show can produce. I’m for all of these as often as possible because I believe that our hearts are made more alive and able to reveal love when we’re in the midst of celebrating special times and our special selves. There is lift and leaven inherent in celebration.

Filled with the events in peoples' lives...
The lives of ministers are filled with the events in peoples’ lives. Some of them may hold sadness, but many of them hold great joy. It has been said that ministry is a profession that allows its clergy to grow up in public. True enough, and if you’re in the ministry long enough, you can watch the public grow up as well.

We gave all grown up...
Over the last several decades I think we have all grown up a great deal around end of life commemorations, such as funerals and memorials. During my early years in ministry, such times were quite mournful and somber, most probably because we looked at life and death as mutually exclusive situations, death being something to be feared and not even spoken about. Over the years I have watched us all come to understand that life and death belong together as two ends of the same stick. Certainly we can’t avoid either. We have come to know that our lives are large enough to embrace all its parts, and that every day lived brings us one day closer to our eventual, physical demise. Funerals and memorials have taken on a whole, different tone now. We call them “celebrations of life,” remembering, yes, and senses of loss also, but a clear celebration as well of a life that was lived among us, a life that may have made our hearts very glad.

We have valuable, memorable lives...
Celebrations make everything important. They capture our accomplishments; they let us know that we have valuable, memorable lives, that we do make lasting impressions on those around us.

I say…bring ‘em on!

On Noticing

How many times do we look…without seeing? Or listen…without hearing? No surprise here. With as busy and scattered as we can get, it is very easy to cast a gaze in a particular direction and come away with little or no memory of what we were looking at. In a word, we are not noticing any more. We are flying through our lives, agendas chock full, often with little or no time to ratchet down the course in front of us. Sometimes I think that the day before us just translates as “stuff to do,” not as spaces where ideas, impressions and images can shake out before us.

Everything is present...

Our home has a large bay window with San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County spread before us every minute of the day. I cannot begin to think of how many times we have stood before that view, sometimes for good lengths of time, and watched it change before our eyes. And these changes are never like the ones we saw the day before. We know this because we are noticing. Everything is present…clouds, sun, rain, small boats, bare waters. We have grown so used to looking every day that we are truly seeing as well.

A human skill...
Noticing is a human skill that can get away from us if we are not careful, but we can always get it back. And we do have reasons for noticing. Writers are always paying attention…to ideas that come up, to people who are presenting before them, to the scope of their own thoughts. But all kinds of thinkers are noticers as well. Anyone who actually spends real time with himself inside his own day is a noticer.

A calmer place in us...
It could well be that we will need to return again to a calmer place in us that thinks about one thing at a time. Multi-media distractions are not all they’re cracked up to be. With so much information and sound passing before us, there is no one thing that is precious on its own. Our tech progress will not stop advancing, of course, so we will have to be the ones who sort out the ideas and images we want to notice.

To notice once more...
When we were little kids we noticed everything, including the bugs in our yards. And maybe some of this came about because we were a lot closer to the ground in those days, but then…wouldn’t it be grand, really grand, to again be able to look…and also see? To listen…and also hear? To notice once more.

On Surviving the Holidays

We are smack dab in the middle of what we commonly call the Holiday Season, greeted all the way from signs of resignation to quiet (or not so quiet) resentments to real delight seen in the eyes of the very young enjoying colored lights and good smells. For many it’s a time for family gatherings or get-togethers among mutually-created families. On the lighter side, some of my Jewish friends tell a wonderful story on themselves. They say that if you are looking for Jews on Christmas, you’ll probably find them in a Chinese restaurant, which is one of the few places open! Then there are those who have no religious or familial connections who can enjoy a spiritual day of quiet reflection and renewal, and who’s to say that these folks don’t have the wisest use of the occasion.

Its own kind of healing...

Wherever we find ourselves in this mix, there should be one thing we are not subject to, and that is the abuse that some inflict upon hapless family or friends when days off are just an excuse for bad behaviors, perhaps due to substance overuse. This is not just a problem for holidays and needs its own kind of healing mechanisms over a long-term basis.

We might never have imagined...
Holidays are, after all, times away from the regular schedules, and they can be special. The Christmas Holidays, which also involve Channukah and very occasionally Ramadan, can be highly spiritual…a real time out to take stock of what values anchor our lives. Perhaps they are involved in honoring beliefs; perhaps they allow for treasured gatherings. Whatever they mean these times can carry some of the most interesting little gems. Yes, they are times of gift giving and extensions of ourselves, and sometimes some of the gifts bring things we might have never imagined. For several decades it has been my husband’s and my habit to hold Christmas dinner and some present opening at our home. Over time our guests have taken to bringing dishes so that there are many hands involved in food prep. These dinners have enlarged, of course, as partners and grandchildren have come along, and I would wonder from time to time if these growing young adults wouldn’t prefer other pursuits and other places rather than hanging around with grandparents, of all people. Then during our last Christmas gathering I happened to walk behind the chair of a granddaughter who now has a wiggling toddler of her own. I caught just a snatch of her conversation with a cousin as I was passing by, and I heard her say, “Well, of course we spend Christmas with Nana and Grandpa. It’s tradition!” Who would have thought??

Funny how some of the smallest things can sometimes make the biggest differences!

On a Mighty Soul

         

We honor and release Nelson Mandela, 95 years old, full of days and the fruits of life-long efforts on behalf of black South Africans. Even sick and weakened in his physical body, the people would not let him go. How could they, I suppose? Upon his passing, South African President Jacob Zuma addressed him as South Africa’s greatest son and father to all.

An ordinary man...

Mandela referred to himself as an ordinary man. Perhaps he really believed this, even though ordinariness was forever denied him once he became South Africa’s first black president in 1994. The wonder is that he served as president for only one term when certainly he could have remained in office much longer. Perhaps he felt he could do more out of office.

This is not the time for revenge...

Certainly he had the vision of freedom, dignity and equality for all South Africans in his bones, but he was a confident ways-and-means man as well. In an interview, he once described himself as a strategist and tactician. He knew what to do with what was in front of him, and he, like Gandhi before him, knew the measure of his opponents. They were oppressive and unjust men, often cruel in their actions, but they were not Nazis. When freed from the long, 27 years in prison, fully orbed with the power he had grown into, he told those roiling for pay-back: This is not the time for revenge…This from a wise and honorable heart.

The principles of dignity, freedom and equality...

With his death, he has given the world one more gift. He has brought to public prominence once more the principles of dignity, freedom and equality he so longed for. Fresh to mind again, we are reminded that these principles are human mandates for all. His was a mighty soul indeed.

Peace on earth, goodwill to all...

Did Mandela achieve all that he might have wished for? Probably not…heroic figures seldom see complete fulfillments, but they inspire because they move us along the path of greater spiritual awareness…the path that honors Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all.

On The Seasons of the Heart

I particularly enjoy this time of year, not necessarily for any religious reasons, but for the colors, fragrances and conviviality that show up in greater abundance. People are just in a better frame of mind. For some of us there may be spiritual overtones, but we can be just as spiritually involved with life at any other time as well. For some there are gatherings of families or groups, some of which seem perfectly natural, some of which are somewhat contrived; and there can be conflicts that arise when people who don’t particularly want to be together are thrown together.

The better angels of our nature...

Perhaps we could view this season in a personalized way, as something that would allow gift giving, good feelings and doing good in ways and situations that we choose. Certainly there can be religious/spiritual inklings, if we wish, but we can also choose basic human ethics as a means to give a bit of ourselves away. What if we listened to the better angels of our natures as they sing the Christmas mandate to us…Peace on earth, good will to all? And what if we actually decided to try it for once? What if we gave everyone a break, at least for awhile, including ourselves and some of those folks we find so difficult? Couldn’t this allow a little healing to take place?

A tale of redemption...

One of my favorites, Charles Dicken’s  A Christmas Carol, is not so much a story of Christmas as it is a tale of redemption. We know the story of the miser whose better angels…er, ghosts…portrayed for him another way to think, and he transformed his life. It simply happened that setting the story at Christmastime was economically better for Dickens. This story has been so enjoyed over time that the name of its main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, has slipped into the lexicon of English speakers. Whenever we think of someone who is stingy, miserable and mean spirited, don’t we think of him as being a “scrooge” or “scrooge-like?” What we have forgotten is the second half of this tale…the remaking of Scrooge into a character of generosity and love.  Perhaps there is also a part of us that can be remade so that we become more than we thought we could.

The course of spiritual love...

I think that what this should tell us is that redemption lives in the heart of every one of us, not just in one, splendid Divine son. The believer thinks that everything he does is shot through with divinity and that the course of spiritual love is always open. I think that at every level, whether we are believers or not, we somehow know that we have more to give.  Not a bad way at all to enter into this season of the heart!