No Guarantees

The beginning of a new year often puts me in a reflective frame of mind. I look back over the year just past and think about opportunities seized (and missed), new relationships started (and ended), and successes (and failures).

I also think about the upcoming year and its prospects. What do I hope to do (and refrain from doing)? What goals will I reach (or fall short of)? What changes will happen to me and what changes will I make (or fail to make)?

One certain truth when it comes to the future is this: there are no guarantees. Health, success, prosperity aren't guaranteed. Neither is life.

We live and act as if we know for certain that we will be alive to enjoy tomorrow, next month or next year. Yet, we don't know, and can't know, what the future holds.

Accepting that we are always moving into an uncertain future isn't easy. It means giving up the illusion that we can control what happens to us and to those we love.

Yet, once we accept this truth, we are free to live and love more fully. As long as we labor under the delusion that we can control the future, we will be continually frustrated and even unhappy. Accepting the uncertainty inherent in life is to recognize that life is a gift with no guarantees.

Struck by Grace in the New Year

As we begin another year, the gift I hope for all of us is the gift of grace. The late theologian Paul Tillich understood grace as "God's radical acceptance of us." My favorite Tillich quote on grace comes from his book, The Shaking of the Foundations.

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we are estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us has they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that your are accepted!" If that happens to us we experience grace. After that experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed.

Getting Lighter in the New Year

As in previous years, the #1 New Year’s resolution is (you guessed it) to lose weight. Exercising regularly is a close second with quitting smoking in third place. The fact that losing weight/going on a diet has been at the top of New Year’s resolution lists ever since I can remember is a testimony to the weakness of our resolve.

Or maybe the reason losing weight is our top priority is that New Year’s follows the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, where overindulgence at the dining table is a national tradition.

I like how W.H. Auden put it in his long poem, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio: “There are enough leftovers to do, warmed up, for the rest of the week/Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,/Stayed up so late, attempted—quite unsuccessfully--/To love all of our relatives, and in general/Grossly overestimated our powers.”

Even though it is good and healthy to not be overweight, I’d like to suggest we try a different kind of New Year’s resolution, a spiritual resolution if you will: to go on a “spiritual diet”.

What I am suggesting is that we take some time early in 2010 to examine the state of our souls and recognize what we need to lose or shed.

For instance, many of us are weighed down with worries and anxiety about the future, our own and the future of the world. The weight of these concerns can be crushing.

Is it possible to shed some of the weight of worry and anxiety? If we could learn to trust in God’s grace and love, perhaps we would worry less about the future. If we could let go of our worries by placing them in God’s hands, I’ll bet we’d feel lighter, and happier.

Others of us are weighed down with the affliction of “too much.” We can easily accumulate too much of, well, nearly everything: clothes, wine, jewelry, shoes, and (yes) even money. The cure for this affliction is to go on a different kind of diet in which we give away those things we don’t use or need to those who really need them.

The result of lightening up in the area of possessions is that we can travel through this world lighter—and freer. The real problem with too many possessions is that they end up possessing us. Taking care of our growing number of possessions ends up taking too much of our time and energy.

Another excess weight we carry is the weight of feeling as if we need to have control over everything. You’ve likely heard the expression “he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.” When you think about it, it’s pretty narcissistic to believe that we can even come close to being in control over everything in our lives.

What if we could relinquish our need to control everything? What if we could let go of the illusion that everything depends upon our efforts alone? Again, if we could learn to turn over our need to control things to God, our burdens would be so much lighter.

So, let us resolve in 2010 to go on a spiritual diet of shedding worries, giving away unneeded possessions, and letting go of our need to control everything. If committed ourselves to losing this spiritual weight, our lives would be so much lighter and happier.