Reflection: The Old Year Has Now Passed Away
In past years, the Sunday after Christmas was often a quiet one with fewer people in church than usual after the buildup of Advent, the concerts, pageants, parties and finally the arrival of Christmas Day with large, festive gatherings. Some of us who sang in a choir or had a service role to play expected to be in the church building for worship on this Sunday morning…perhaps a bit groggy and worse for wear after the holiday rush and trying to change our mindset to optimistic welcoming of a new year. That was all before the current pandemic.
I promised Rev. Janet that I would not venture into the themes of next week, which she will celebrate as New Year’s Sunday, so this one may as well be called Old Year’s Sunday…plus we remain in this December’s Unitarian-Universalist theme of Stillness for a few days longer.
Last month, our services focused on Gratitude, which may seem like a paradoxical emotion for a year marked by a world-wide plague of (literally) Biblical proportions, of cruel embedded racism often resulting in death or injustice for people of color, and of enduring in our country’s politics the closest thing we have experienced to watching a mad king since Shakespeare penned King Lear. At times, it has seemed surreal, as if we might be having a shared anxiety attack and hoping that we might wake up in the morning to discover it was just a bad dream. But sadly, it has been all too real.
Perhaps one of the greatest burdens of 2020 has been the assault of what might be called “not knowing,” as our minds try to maintain modern, orderly and predictable lives. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the best-selling book, the “Power of Now” by Eckart Tolle. He writes about the way our minds work with a keen awareness of the human condition, rooted in the Buddhist tradition, but in mostly everyday language.
A key theme in this very deep book is how the mind, which is a wonderful tool for accomplishing good things, very often get the better of us. The mind wants to arrange everything and is always comparing what has happened in the past to what might happen in the future, trying to achieve things that it thinks will bring us security, admiration and happiness…but which often is a never-ending quest that results in our feeling pain or disappointment.
In a year like 2020, with what feels like constant threats on all sides, our minds can go into a kind of overdrive of fear and anxiety, drowning out our ability to access the light we possess within…that same light that John Murray talked about as the tiny essence of the Divine in each of us. Ironically, in a year like this, we need to experience that shared essence of joy and love within more than ever.
Much has been written this year about wanting to return to “normalcy”, which instantly begs the question of what we consider normal or expected. Christmas is a particularly rich, but sometimes troubling time for such musings. Start with the celebration of Jesus’ birth, a miracle we are told as he was born as a human baby to his virgin mother, Mary. The story we know so well about the star, the shepherds, the visiting wise persons and the manger is totally charming and fills our hardened modern hearts every year with wonder and hope. But the virgin birth? That’s quite a stretch to our empirical, critical modern minds!
In many places and ways, including the carol “O Holy Night,” we hear that Jesus has come to redeem the world from “sin and error pining”…words that may make some Unitarians shiver while some Universalists will nod Amen…but the concept of salvation is embedded in us. Our shared cultural heritage about humanity waiting for a Savior goes back to the Book of Genesis, the fabled Garden of Eden and the creation story shared by the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
We are told, “If only Adam and Eve had not eaten the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” as God warned them not to do! By eating that apple, the story explains that they insured that the entirely of human history would be predestined to untold centuries of struggle, sin, suffering and death…a curse the present pandemic has made us so immediately aware of again.
But, our ever enquiring minds can’t help but ask, if God is all-knowing wouldn’t He have also known, like just every parent over the centuries, that His children would inevitably be drawn to try the one thing that were forbidden to have? Is our creation story a “set-up” that God must have known was surely destined to happen sooner or later? If God is Love and the light of the universe, the message of the story of a stern father-figure who would banish his children from paradise for this predictable lapse does not seem to fit very well.
Of course, all civilizations have some sort of creation myth, as anthropologists like to remind us, a story that established the basis of our civilization’s view of itself. That emphasis on right and wrong in Genesis permeates our culture.
For example, all throughout our youth and early adult lives, parents and teachers of all sorts put extremely high emphasis on our learning the proscribed answers to things. In school tests and reviews are done to make sure that students provide the “right” answers, so it is no wonder that embedded in our culture is the desire to know everything. Our Unitarian-Universalist roots are drawn strongly from this belief in knowledge and reason. We respect people of diverse religious traditions, and just as important, those who do not ascribe to a religious belief but otherwise seek meaning…but an underlying supposition is that our minds are always seeking some kind of reasonable truth.
One can clearly see the roots of religious fundamentalism in our culture’s insistence that there is a correct answer to everything because it creates in some people the need for absolute, inarguable truths. Inevitably that impulse, taken to extremes, is divisive of people, families and nations; often leading to wars and destructive power struggles.
Perhaps real wisdom comes in the form of acknowledging that there are things we cannot know, empirically prove, or alter. It may come as acceptance, which goes beyond human reasoning, of another level of understanding. We don’t need to literally believe that Creation occurred in 7 Earth-days. We can none-the-less believe that there is a Great Spirit, an unknowable Power of Creation, or as we often say in this congregation inspired so long ago by Rev. John Murray: “the Source of Light and Love from which we come and to which we return” without having to know exactly how the universe began or works.
We also don’t have to necessarily believe in every aspect of the Nativity story to keep in our hearts the great lessons that Jesus gave to all of humanity. In a parallel way, we all came to some point in childhood when we realized that Santa Clause could not actually come down the chimney with gifts and or fly over the rooftops with reindeer. That does not diminish the joy of our exchanging gifts and especially revisiting the wonder of childhood. Perhaps it is more than enough to enjoy the season of lights in the darkest time of the year when everyone needs encouragement and hope to get through the winter ahead.
So what, you may ask, does this have to do with saying goodbye to the year 2020? Well, first, this year we re-learned a painful lesson about acceptance of our human frailty: as science gets closer to finding the secrets of life we are still sometimes vulnerable to the tiniest of microbes gone awry. Second, we had to acknowledge yet again the deadly results of embedded racism in our society and the need to work harder towards social justice. And third, this year we learned, and are still learning, how fragile and susceptible to misinformation and manipulation is our democratic form of government.
The tension, fear and frustration caused by these three sources of bad news and the constant feeling of being under some kind of an existential threat, have worn us down badly. Even with vaccines arriving we are now wary of life ever feeling the same again, so as a civilization, we have come to view ourselves constantly at-risk. As a result our minds tend to remain in that fear-driven overdrive.
I am reminded of another troubled time in America and a visit in the late 1960’s to my family home in Watertown from my Uncle Harry Kuljian, a man I admired greatly as a child, and discovering his stark views about human history. The Vietnam War was raging along with the enormous social unrest of that time and discussions in our house turned to politics and world affairs. I was pretty sad to discover that he supported a hawkish U.S. position in Vietnam but I remember being absolutely shocked when he asserted that wars were part of Nature’s way of protecting the Earth from over-population. In addition, he said that wars were often the time of the greatest scientific progress. It was a bloody assessment, coupled with the belief that American young people, like myself, who were against the Vietnam War and in favor of liberation movements, had become brainwashed with pro-socialist, liberal-media propaganda! Does that sound familiar?
If Uncle Harry were here today he would surely point out that this pandemic, like a war, had spurred scientific development of a vaccine that would never have happened otherwise and brought success in record time. Perhaps, like you, I find it very hard to accept that it took so much death and suffering to spur world governments to support development of these vaccines…but it is truly a miracle of our time. Some may ascribe all this scientific progress to the modern, empirical mindset, but Echart Tolle also points out that all great scientists (Einstein included) credited the time when they suspended their minds at rest, play, prayer, or meditation for their most important discoveries.
In 2020 most of us have had to take a good long look at what really matters in life and recognize that the way we were living before Covid 19 was in a kind of blindness. Blind to the reality that life is in the present, it’s all that we really have, and we need to concentrate better on the things that really matter. Knowing that so many people are suffering with bodily pain, the inability to breathe (whether by disease or police brutality), we appreciate life more because it can all be so easily taken away. We can be also hugely grateful that that although our democracy is vulnerable the Constitution remains strong and we have to be vigilant to protect it. There is real wisdom gained from these painful experiences.
Of course, we wish that we did not have to keep going through this. But as a community, we have become in the words of the liberation hymn by Holly Near, more of “an angry, gentle people.”
Our Readings today were taken from an older popular book called “When Bad Things happen to Good People” by Harold Kushner, Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts. His book was inspired by having a child born with a degenerative disease that caused stunted growth, premature aging and a short life. His son Aaron died at age 14 and he wrote about the experience as a person with faith in a loving God who helps provide us the strength to endure seemingly unbearable things, but not a God who makes bad things happen or with the power to intervene in the laws of physics or the natural cycles of life. As Rev. Janet read:
“It becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don’t hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world.”
For me, the most poignant part of this book, which is rich with wisdom, is when he recognizes that his son’s illness had provided inspiration for many of Aaron’s friends to understand and appreciate life differently. He especially knows that the emotional pain had made him dig deep into what he really believes and to be a more empathetic Rabbi, helping others dealing with illness, tragedy or death.
But in the same breath, he says he would have given anything to have had a healthy son grow up and have a normal life. He acknowledges that life is sometimes extremely unfair but that when bad things happen to good people it is not God’s doing. God is found in how we respond to hurt, anger, and despair, often by seeking help through prayer, meditation, or perhaps just being in the moment, watching the ocean. Suspending our over-active minds in quietude, deeper understanding can emerge from within us, and we miraculously find the strength to go on.
Looking back on 2020, we are in some ways in a similar place as Rabbi Kushner. We wish with all of our hearts that we did not have to go through this pandemic, of seeing the deadly cruelty of ingrained racism, or to watch our government teeter on the edge of fracturing. But is not some kind of punishment brought on by a vindictive God – Rabbi Kushner observes why would anyone worship such a being?- our circumstances are the result of natural forces, like gravity that is essential to living our lives but is also the cause of why planes crash- forces which sometimes run amuck.
This is another kind of acceptance: that there is certain amount of chaos inherent in our otherwise orderly understanding of the universe despite our minds’ wish for everything to happen for a reason that we can quantify or understand. But bad things will continue to happen…one of the hardest things to acknowledge because we cannot control them away.
In closing on a much lighter note, I am reminded of the character Tevye, played by Zero Mostel in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, who sings the unforgettable song, “If I were a Rich Man.” At times deeply pained and alternately mirthful as he imagines what his life would be like if wealthy, he struggles to understand why he is poor and has to work so hard to live. He sings:
“If I were a rich man,
Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.
All day long I’d biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.”
After a wonderful litany of complaints and dreams, he concludes:
“Lord who made the lion and the lamb,
You decreed I should be what I am.
Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?
If I were a wealthy man.”
Dear friends, if there is a vast eternal plan, we certainly don’t know what it is!
But as we say goodbye to 2020 and nurture hope for a healthier, less chaotic year ahead, let us try to be grateful for many good things in our lives and especially for this community of faith and support that helps to sustain us through tough times. Recognize the light in others and be thankful for the good so many people show by their actions… but especially recognize that light in yourself and nurture it with tenderness. In this deep dark winter, try visualizing the Star of Bethlehem guiding you to that inner place where peace, joy and love are waiting to be released in every moment of your life.
Thank you for letting me share my thoughts with you.
Charles Nazarian
Delivered in the Sunday Zoom service on December 27, 2020
