We gather

We gather
to give thanks for my 25 years.

Sunday, November 24, 2024

One Church year ends and and another begins.

Yes, before Christmas, the Church has an early New Year, beginning with the First Sunday of Advent.  So we finished our year on the last Sunday of November.  We do like to be different, but the point is that the dates of the Church Year revolve around the timing of Easter. 

By nature, end of year is a good time to reflect, being good to stand back and ask:  How are we going?  Where are we going?  What have we learnt?   

As I get older, I reflect that life gets more challenging and interesting - more challenging with the natural losses in life and more interesting in watching our world, from hopefully a wiser standpoint.  

I recently came across an American-Vietnamese writer, Viet Thanh Nguyen, an insightful and smart individual.  For me, his wisdom was in naming that we are people in construction and that our vulnerability is our strength.  I find both to be so true as I deal with my own vulnerabilities and loss, as well as that of those around me.  

The line from another writer, TS Eliot, also stays with me at this time - In my beginning is my end.  I only came across it in the last month, while reading a work on prayer by Archbishop Kallistos Ware, but this line literally haunts me.  What is it saying to me?  Its message is slowly unfolding.  

Is it that we keep repeating the same themes in life, even if absolutely absurd?  Is it we never learn?  Is it that God's presence is eternally now?  Is it all this and much more?  Who knows?  More to come.  Life is a mystery.  It remains as such and I only grow in my appreciation of this as I go along in life.   I give thanks for a year that has been and look forward to a year that is to unfold more of God's mystery.    

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