Creating the New Year in Our Lives
Rev. John Simmons
The Community Church of Sebastopol
The January 1, 2006y
Psalm 100
Tuesday night a dear friend of mine was coming down Graton Road from the direction of Occidental. Just before Graton there was, what she thought, just a little water on the road. Moments later her car was adrift and the water rising. Fortunately her daughter was following her in another car and had not entered the water. She was able to call 911 and as soon as they could get assembled, came to the rescue. Rather than being caught up in the loss of her car, which was special to her since it had been her mother’s, she was rejoicing that she, her passenger and her daughter were alive and unhurt. The temperature of the rising water was not even cold. On a morning after this incident I was on my way to the YMCA in Santa Rosa for my daily water aerobics class. I generally have my radio tuned to NPR. The program was a discussion on “Happiness” with a number of resource people. There was the usual combination psychobabble and some good information. One of the women told the following story. The story is not verbatim because I am having to reconstruct it from memory.
“About seven years ago a friend and I decided that every evening we would send an email to each other telling about two things we were grateful for that had occurred during that day. We didn’t know what it would do for us, but we gave it a try. We’ve been doing that now for seven years and both of us have discovered that it opens our lives to a lot more joy and happiness”.
The Old One Hundredth is a Psalm about gratefulness. We are invited to make a joyful noise and to worship God with gladness. It reminds us that God is good. His steadfast love lasts forever and his faithfulness to all generations.
The beginning of a new year can create within us a time to think about the past and to open ourselves up to hope about what is to come. There was a lot to be sad about in the past year. There have been terrible natural disasters, hundreds killed in violence in Iraq, Palestine, Israel or the many countries where people have used destruction as a way of expressing their frustrations with their lives. It is a year in which we have discovered that some leaders of both corporate America and government have turned out to be less than honorable. We no longer are sure when we are in the presence of deception or in the presence of revelation. It is a confusing time.
Yet we are called to be people of joy, gladness and thanksgiving. As many of you know I am an ardent supporter of the political process. Over the last few years I find my ardor waning both locally and nationally. The desire to put more energy into the system does not excite me. I could fine this depressing, but instead, it is helping me to see that faith in government is not the same as faith in God. I am having to reevaluate my goals and the directions in which I am moving with my life.
In my Christmas Greetings to friends and family I found myself sharing that I need to put more energy into the life of spirit than into the life of politics. The New Year is before me and I find God is calling me. I also find that I am somewhat nervous about answering the call for I do not know where it will lead me.
While I was writing this sermon a young friend stopped by and was talking about some aspect of her life in the future. I reminded her that at age 19, she had probably still had 70 years ahead. Then she informed me that she intended to live to a three-digit life, so it went up to 80. I reminded her that many things would happen to her in her journey that she could not now even imagine.
Recently my doctor told me that at 72, I was no longer considered old. I would have to wait ten or twenty years for that acknowledgment. It had never occurred to me that at 72 I would have maybe another 20 years of my life and that I needed to start thinking about how I wanted to live out my life. I think many of us fail to think about how long we may have to live and haven’t put much energy into what we are going to do with our time.
Here we are at the beginning of a new year and have we thought how we want to live out our lives this year? Oh I know there are a lot of things in place that will determine a lot about our lives. There are our jobs, our families, the up keep and maintenance of our homes and our cars. There are relationships to continue with friends. There are many tasks that we already have as a daily part of our existence, but what about a broader view?
I read a review about the life of C.S. Lewis. In the book “The Fairie King” author Alan Jacobs observes in his book that C.S. Lewis seems not to have been a particularly likeable or interesting man before his conversion to Christianity in 1929. Lewis himself would probably have agreed. Looking back at that time, he recalled examining himself with a practical purpose for the first time and being appalled by what he found: "a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds." He was probably judging himself by standards that would condemn most of us even more severely, but certainly his conversion appears to have infused and changed every part of his life and action.
Before, he seemed not to have known where he was going. He had aspired to be a poet, and had published a couple of long verse narratives that few people have ever cared to read then or since; and he had been forced to recognize that his dearest hope was dead. He knew that he wanted to be an academic (it is unclear whether he ever considered looking for a job outside Oxford), but oddly he did not know what the subject of his life's work should be. He applied for posts in both philosophy and English literature; as it happened, after a couple of rejections, he landed an English job at Magdalene College. Had a philosophy post come his way first, his career might have been unknowably different.
Almost from the moment of his conversion, Lewis acquired an extraordinary fluency. Books poured from him on a wide range of subjects: medieval and Renaissance literature, science fiction, children's books, and Christian writings. Even his explicitly Christian books are diverse in character, ranging from apologetics (Mere Christianity) to philosophical theology (The Problem of Pain, Miracles) and moral theology cast in fictional form (The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce). Once he became famous as a Christian thinker, in his forties, he received a flood of letters from admirers, some of them importunate and tediously persistent; and dutifully he spent a large part of his time replying to them in longhand, often with a kindness and fullness that encouraged them to write back again and again. All this while holding down a full-time academic post, coping with odd domestic circumstances that drained time and spirit from him and suffering frequent ill health. He must have been tough.
Now I’m not concerned with how many budding C. S. Lewis’ there are amongst us. I am intrigued that as Lewis opened himself up to his own faith journey his life underwent a considerable change. What could happen to you and me if we were more open to our own faith and were willing to explore it to see where it might take us?
Here we stand at the beginning of a new year. Is our past, our daily rituals, our every day tasks, the demands of our physical life, the influence of past experiences going to determine the year ahead? Or are we willing to look inside of ourselves for the flickering spirit of faith that is a part of each of our creations? Are we willing to fan the flickering ember into a flame that begins to lead us more fully into the lives that are possible for people of faith?
I am not a winter person. After many years of drudging from Thanksgiving to Ground Hog Day, I discovered that I, like many people in the northern hemisphere, suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. It has to do with the effect of early morning light on the adrenals. My doctor advised me to put a grow light over my head and attach it to a time that would turn it on at 5 in the morning. It was an inexpensive thing to do and so I tried it and it worked. A half an hour of that light somehow touched my adrenals at that time and affected the rest of my day.
Some years later I decided that I would try going through the dark period as a part of experience my own cycle. Now I was doing it by choice and I found many riches in that part of my life. I still look forward to the coming of spring, but I have also discovered the value of winter.
This winter I started taking a water color class. Now I need for you to know that when any one would suggest as a part of a group experience the use of paints, or crayons or anything else to do with art, I always beat a hasty retreat. I am not going to be a Grandpa Moses but I am beginning a new appreciation of color and I enjoy playing with it. It is a part of my spirit that I have kept hidden for at least 60 years.
Now all of our lives are different and there is no universal act that will work for all of us but there are some guidelines that we have had down through the years.
One of these guidelines is the Psalm that I used this morning. I have a friend who has recently joined a group of four other women to read “The Nun’s Secret” the story of a Buddhist nun and her journey of faith. It is not a book about religion; it is a book of practices. One of the women in the group was amazed when told that Buddhism was a religion. She thought it was just certain kind of practices. Its too bad there is not the same confusion about Christianity, which sometime seems short on practices and long on “religious expressions”.
I have heard of a family that when they sit down for a meal together that each member is asked to share something that they are grateful for in earlier part of the day. Everyone has to stop and think and the family also discovered that they are more aware of the good things happening to them during the day as they look forward to sharing them in the evening. Another friend, when she awakes, asks the spirit within her to help her be more open to all of the experiences of the day.
The list of little things we can do is endless and we simply need to find that which will work for us. It is not an easy task. Last night, for some reason, the raindrops beating down on my glass ceiling were keeping me awake. I got up to find some earplugs but they weren’t readily available. I knew where some were, but it would take some digging to find them. It was two hours before I was willing to spend the five minutes unearthing them and plugging up my ears. So little tings are not easy but they are doable.
Shortly we are going to experience communion. It means many things for those of us participating in the service. As you are coming forward to take communion, if that is your choice, I ask that you think of someone you would like to enrich your communion with this very day. It could be God, Jesus or it could be you, a child, a friend, a partner, a spouse. It could be a group or an individual. Just think of someone and bring that thought to the table with you. Partake of the bread and of the cup not only in memory of Jesus and his life but also in connection with the person, or spirit you thought of as you walked down the aisle. This is a time of communion.
We do have a part in creating our own reality. Our life is not up to the fates. It is up to how we deal with the many choices before us. All of can enrich our lives by exerting just a little effort.
Be a major player in the creation of your own new year.