Dear Beloveds,
As we approach the end of 2021, and look to a new year, I’m noting the range of emotions in me: relief (that we made it through); some dread and maybe even fear (how many variants will 2022 bring, how much longer will this go on?); and maybe even some hope (will the longer this disruption lasts open up the possibility of some longer-lasting changes?).
I certainly hoped we would be ending this year with the pandemic much more in the rear view mirror than it seems to be. I think the realization that this, in some form, will be with us for a long time is something that I have now come to accept. But as we end this year I think it is important to both name the many losses that have come in this time as well as the awakenings that have also come. It has all been a lot to hold, and will continue to be. Even as (hopefully) things get better there will be lot to take in and still a lot to hold.
The other awareness that I’m noting right now is just how quickly the years do pass by, how fast our children grow, how each of us moves through time in our own particular way. How we each, with time, find our way even as the contexts in which we live also change and move through time. Perhaps it comes back to that old realization that change is the one thing we can count on in life.
As we look into yet another time of uncertainty, may we also note the things that are abiding: the people in our lives, the communities like the church, the values that ground us even in the midst of change and loss and new beginnings. May this new year be a blessing for all of us.
I offer you this poem by John O’Donohue, At the End of the Year:
The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline’s longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening us shapes of days.
As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.
The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.
Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.
The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.
The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.
Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.
We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.