Often one of the things we do as we approach a new year is to lament the old year. We take stock of our days, good and bad — and we disparage the bad far more than we celebrate the good. We spend moments of regret and self-recrimination for the things we left undone or for the things we did not do well. We spend moments blaming ourselves for things that were out of our control, and we critique our performance of those things we did control.
Perhaps we need to check ourselves if we find that we are reviewing the old year with too much reproach, regret and recrimination. It’s not a very good use of precious time. Instead, might we review the old year’s times of celebration — the days of joy, accomplishment, the days when our health was good and our hearts were strong, the days we survived calamity and dodged a few bullets.
Perhaps we should recall the times precious and poignant when our souls rejoiced in sweeter days we will remember with fondness. Perhaps we need to take stock of the ways we became stronger and found resilience in ourselves. Perhaps we need to celebrate the times we were gentle and kind, loving and compassionate. Perhaps we should count our friendships and the loving acts of those who love us.
Might we refuse to see the old year as a series of burdens and see it, instead, as a year that poured blessings on our lives. Is it possible that spending our reflections on the old year, seeing the grace it brought us, will enable us to believe in the grace that the new year will most surely bring?
It is true that this old year will end, for good or ill. Some might long to have it back, while others curse it as it leaves. This poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox that speaks of “the burden of the year” reminds us of the ways we experienced the old year with both weeping and laughing. That is life’s reality that surely promises that the new year 2020 will bring us the twofold, paradoxical gift of fear and faith, despair and hope.
The Year
Ella Wheeler Wilcox – 1850-1919
What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year.
If you will miss the year behind, celebrate what it left you. If it took and demanded your very life-breath, curse it if you need to, and then accept the ways it strengthened you. May we all spend a few moments or a few hours reviewing the year behind us, and find there laughter and weeping, hope and fear. All were meant to teach and to guide and to create strength in us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley 