On the Newness of the Year: A New Year's Wish.

I’ve recently started thinking about building a new door into my house, one that would lead directly out to the garden, so that neither I nor my elderly dog would have to climb the ramp to the back deck. This may never come to pass, due to lack of finances, but it touches off ideas about doors and gateways, entrances and exits, New Years and old ones.

            The Roman god Janus, who gave his name to January, was of course the god of beginnings as well as of gates. He held the key to the past as well as the future. He not only governed the gate, he was the gate, through which everyone passed into wise or dangerous times. So he was two-faced, naturally. So important was the gate, that Janus was invoked before all other gods, because what comes at the beginning is the first and thus most honoured,

            When we pass the gate of the New Year, do we really get a brand new year without any mistakes in it? What can we carry over the threshold? A lot seems to come with us. Egyptian Christians have appealed to the world that on this 31 December 2013 they’ll be attacked by their compatriots, bringing violence and destruction across the line from old year to new. That they can know the date is chilling; others have known the date before them and the world has done nothing to help. Should we feel pity and fear, as Aristotle said of tragedy, at the turning of each year? Instead of celebrating it with fireworks and champagne? Is the year ever new?

            In spite of danger and decline, people still are inspired to set New Year’s resolutions and try to carry them out. Why do we make so many mistakes, anyway?

Generally because we’re either half asleep, not paying proper attention, or full of expectations about our own alertness: probably both at the same time. We lack a clear assessment of our limitations. Our limitations travel with us, into the New Year for sure, and Proust seemed to believe that our mistakes and limitations defined our character: hence their repetitive nature.

            What chance do we have of realising our dreams, reaching our goals, slowing down, finding the love of our life, seeing the world, making a difference, or any of a hundred other designs and resolutions, in the New Year? Will we have time to take up painting and poetry for pleasure, like Noel Coward (in the midst of writing and performing in hit shows and films all year long)? Can we beget a dynasty? Will we put our financial house in order, mend the roof, forgive our enemies and move on? All of this is in process, and we do the best we can with it, taking our faults and failings with us as part of the ballast.

            Another one who, like Janus, not only controlled the gate, but is the gate, is Jesus, who in John’s Gospel spoke these words: “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.” In contrast to those who steal, kill and destroy, Jesus carries across the threshold life, abundant life. All of our dreams, resolutions, emotions, ambitions, limitations and devotions amount to this: they are life. May you have, in the New Year, abundant life.

On Christmas: Families and Forgiveness

Christmas is a joyous occasion. Everyone agrees upon it, but when Christmas is separated from its sacred meaning, it can become a time of doubt and dread. I sometimes attended a bereavement support group, and I found there the single most frightening day of the year was Christmas Day. It’s not only the missing partner, child or parent — though that’s fearful enough when all the world’s apparently celebrating family closeness — but also the expectation of ‘getting over it’ and having a happy day with the special need to make everything all right for any children who may be present.

            Recovering alcoholics report the same phenomenon. Long previous planning is recommended as to where, when and how the temptation to drink at Christmas may be forestalled. Depression, suicide attempts, mental illnesses crowd hospitals along with road accidents compliments of the season. Domestic violence spirals up off the thermometer in the Christmas season, just when support services are winding down for the long holiday break, and any money received with the intention that it be spent to tide people over may all have been spent on Christmas — Christmas as a reward for a year of hardship and struggle — making the post-Christmas period one of poverty and regret for many.

            Insofar as Christmas is really about family, it’s important to realise the family being celebrated isn’t our own dear and binding human families, but the Holy Family, a unique and sacred situation. (The actual feast day is the Sunday following Christmas.) Our families, as we know too well, are comprised of persons like ourselves, short-tempered, full of mistakes and catastrophes, resolute in disagreements, grieving, ill, angry, tearful, sometimes funny, sometimes unwholesome and only part of the time glorious in achievement and astonishing in beauty.

            The Holy Family comprises a Blessed, dedicated, and loving Mother, who meditates in her heart and stores up signs of divine favour; a most wonderful Child, whose titles have preceded him into a world longing for salvation; a just and honourable Father (or as we would say today, stepfather), Joseph, who protects both Mother and Child within his respected family, and this identification will last into the adulthood of Jesus. Luke 3:23 at Jesus’ Baptism reports that ‘he was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli’: what this means is that for every social purpose Jesus was the son of Joseph — as what is reported, supposed or believed of a person or family in that culture represents the truth about them — and this parenthetical statement (it was thought) is critically important because it is followed immediately by the genealogy of Joseph.

            Now if partners, stepfathers, and indeed biological fathers as well as every one in charge of a child would take the approach of Saint Joseph and protect that child as one of his or her own, the lesson of the Holy Family would have been truly learned. There’s a gap between what we know of the Holy Family and what we see in the present world, and this gap results from a lack of religious knowledge and commitment and a high expectation of secular success. The gap brings us face to face with the fact that Christmas isn’t really about family at all.

            What is brought into the world, manifested, incarnated, by the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem? What causes us to celebrate our salvation at this time: surely Easter is the right time for it? Yes, the King is born, and a great prophet arises. Yes, the child is laid in a manger, but not through poverty: poverty doesn’t get to be distinguished in this way. Joseph’s family is in the stable because of the press of people arriving for purposes of taxation by the Roman Empire, the same that will kill the child in due course. Yes, the shepherds and the magi respond to signs and wonders, angels singing, a star walking with a lantern through heaven. Something extraordinary has indeed taken place.

            The late John Taverner, on being asked if he prayed, replied that the only proper prayer for a human being to make was this one: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, because I am a sinner.’ And that’s the bottom line.

            My own view is that what is incarnated with the birth of Jesus is the forgiveness of sins. ‘Who is this, who even forgives sins?’ It’s a truth of religion that Jesus died for our sins, and that process begins with his birth. The bereaved may reflect on their feelings of guilt for both the things that should not have been done and the things we left undone to our sorrow as the beloved has died and it’s too late to do them now. Who is this, who even forgives sins? Luke 7:36-50 describes a woman whose sins ‘which were many, have been forgiven’ and for this reason ‘she has shown great love’. There we have the cause of the adoration surrounding Christmas. Those who think they need no forgiveness have actually got it wrong. ‘The one to whom little is forgiven, loves little’. Yes, it’s right to love the little Lord Jesus, asleep in the manger: for our sins, which are many, can be forgiven through the mercy of God. Perhaps we can even learn to forgive ourselves, given time. For those who understand the great love incarnated at Christmas see that mercy dwells among us through the favour of God. Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

On the Christmas Card List.

I’ve been writing Christmas cards.  I wonder how long this custom will last, given internet cards with singing, dancing and flashing lights appearing on our screens.  At present, the two methods seem to coexist, with some preferring the old and some the new.

            The Christmas card list, however, is likely to endure. I find it dismaying to see each year how the list has diminished, due to deaths, divorces, transfers: moves from job to job and house to house (and country to country) and simply dropping off the tree. This can pose problems for the Christmas card writer. Where not enough care was taken last year to record the correct address (some unreadable ones scratched out so many times or so whited over that X-rays couldn’t decipher them) there’s no recourse but to wait for the addressee to send a card and hope they’ve printed a return address on the back.

            Did we write down all the kid’s names?  Have we got the right partner (how embarrassing to greet the one a couple of times prior to this coupling) and are we sending merry wishes to someone recently bereaved? If you only hear from someone once a year, a lot can happen since you last touched noses.

            Then there’s deciding which card to send. Do we buy a box of mixed cards and toss them around? Do we support charities, so a few cents of our greetings attend upon good causes? Do we want classy cards for artistic friends, sentimental cards for family valuables, funny cards for those who, presumably, need cheering up? Religious cards, for those who like religious texts?

            Do we send cards to friends of other religious? I find that “Peace on Earth” is acceptable in most circumstances. And sometimes I’ll get “Merry Christmas” in return, even when the recipient is a Buddhist. That’s a kindly thought, much appreciated, in the presence of universal illusion.

            Indeed, while the Christmas card may well be about Christmas — whatever interpretation we may place on Christmas, from red reindeer on upwards — the Christmas card list is really about New Year.  Or perhaps the transition from Old Year to New. To have a time when we examine our relationships, even in this fragmentary way, to see how many have lasted through months, years, or decades. To see what has gone by the board, and why: left that job, didn’t get in touch, no longer live here, haven’t heard in years, can’t stand the new spouse, it was ages ago, don’t want to go there.

            What do you want to carry into the New Year? What can you afford to carry: mentally, emotionally, spiritually? Are some people on the list bad for you, or are they just absent? What about absence in general? When, where, and to whom do you wish to be absent yourself?

            Absent is the opposite of Advent, it seems to me, writing this on Gaudete Sunday, everyone dressed in rose. Advent is about presence, divine presence that will never leave the list, if list there be. Our names are engraved in our unimaginable billions in the divine mind, never to fall off or out of sight. And as we move from Old Year to New, we take with us the titles of our Saviour recited in the antiphons of Advent: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord) … right through to O Emmanuel (God is with us). Therefore we may rejoice.

On Road Work: Time and Travel.

I spent a lot of time on the road last week, with extra commuting and extra heavy traffic. Somehow I never compute the red lights into time taken to get anywhere, and while I allow the finding of parking a good slice, I usually forget next the walking to where I’m going. I admit to dodgy time management. Then there are uninvited and unwarned events like the fire truck flashing lights and sirens just as you’re about to enter the freeway tunnel, or everybody’s favourite: road work.

            I discovered on Monday that road work has even extended to the parking lot at the pool. Who’d be a road? Everybody walking, cycling, driving over the surface, wearing off the sheen. Road work gets posted whether or not there’s a maintenance vehicle or worker in sight. And since you never know when works begin or where they are, a blank area needs to be entered into the time travel equation for this too. I confess, alas, I fail to do it.

            What are the works of the road? Something to make it more solid, or cleaner —free of overhanging branches, dips, and oily surfaces— or less dangerous: filling potholes and painting guidelines. Sometimes deeper construction, where water gets under the road and collapses it. Sometimes less tragic, where accidents left wreckage on the road.

            How many roads are there? The road we drive on, walk beside, ride over, when we think about it, is an object, clearly of the physical world. But are there not also metaphysical roads? I saw one such road recently, at a performance, given in a church, of Handel’s Messiah.

            The audience had enjoyed an intermission, and now streamed into the church, displaying their differing gestures, heights, colours, costumes, glances, and casting of the eyes, hands, heads, and shoulders as they walked with one another, flowing past like figures in a film, on the other side of the baptismal font where I had stepped aside for a moment to observe. Everything became silent for me as I watched. I knew many of these people, what they had been and were now, and I saw them moving through time, on a road past the baptismal font, on a Way.

            Life is very similar, only rather more noisy most of the time. As all these people flow past you, a river of ever-changing beings, you can reflect on what each one has been and how they have been, both towards you and in the face of their transitions and tragedies, their hopes fulfilled or fallen by the wayside. You can contemplate their illusions and resources, their losses and gains, as if they were your own. One thing is certain: everything is in motion.

            What are the works of the road? Moments like this are one of them. Stepping aside to reflect. Taking time to regard the close connection between birth and death, as the Buddha did. Considering the relationship between faith and salvation, as the Gospels do. Viewing our fellows, both those we know and those we’ve never seen before and won’t again see, with charity and compassion. For we must be in love and charity with our neighbours before we reach our destination. To attain this is the work of the road. And it will slow you down.