Wednesday December 24, 2008
The turning seasons
Tomorrow will be Christmas. Sunday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in northern climes. Already, the days are growing longer, although no one but an astronomer with a stopwatch could detect the difference.
As I write this column, the stock markets – more a thermometer of our emotional attitudes than a true measure of corporate value – seem to have bottomed out like the winter sun.
There is a danger, of course, that if and when the economy recovers and prosperity returns, we will try to claim the credit. When things go well, politicians pat themselves on the back. CEOs accept huge bonuses and pay packages. Retirees like me congratulate ourselves for investing in the right mutual funds.
But when things go badly, it was always caused by circumstances beyond our control, by factors no one could have anticipated. So the automakers, the banks, the mortgage companies, go to governments with begging bowls in hand, hoping for bailouts.
Strange — I didn\’t notice them offering to share any unexpected profits with taxpayers. Did you?
They remind me of the Incas, who believed that their rituals could stop the sun from dipping further towards the horizon, by tethering it to a ceremonial hitching post in their temples.
Cyclical nature
The ancient writer of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes – whoever he was – understood the cyclical nature of all things. “To everything, there is a season,” chapter 3 begins.
A few years ago, I paraphrased that familiar passage this way:
Every action has its equal and opposite reaction.
So we are born, and eventually we die.
We plant seeds in the spring, and rip out roots in the fall.
Killing and healing tread on each other\’s heels.
Buildings go up, and get torn down;
new buildings emerge from the ruins of the old.
The Phoenix rises from its own ashes.
You lose someone you love;
you bounce like a ping-pong ball
between tears and hysterical laughter.
If despair were forever, you couldn\’t carry on,
but you carry on because you know
despair will someday be displaced by dancing again.
You can\’t make love all the time;
sooner or later, you have to become friends.
You misplace your house keys; you find them.
You forget someone\’s name;
it comes back to you in the middle of the night.
You lose a job, and a new career opens up.
You spend the first half of your life gaining possessions,
and the second half giving them away.
The animated conversations of young lovers mature
into the comfortable silences of long familiarity.
Why should we expect a single state of mind,
a single snapshot of experience, to last indefinitely?
Does a pendulum stop at the end of its swing?
So war and peace, love and hate,
togetherness and aloneness,
inevitably cycle and recycle.
This is how God teaches us.
Life is full of resurrections.
So Merry Christmas. Until it comes around again next year.
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Copyright © 2008 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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