You and Me and a Blank Slate

Hello, Brand New Year.

I’ve been so busy these past several days measuring and mixing, stirring and simmering, putting out presents. Hosting. Eating. I’ve barely had time to prepare for your arrival.

What to do on this first day together? Just you and me and a blank slate.

It would be easy to write out a New Year’s list. I love lists. I always feel so organized and fired up and well, a little more prepared for the unknown. But you know what would happen if I put pen to paper today? I’d think too long about 2013, about what I did or didn’t do and about what I wish I hadn’t done. I already spend too many hours looking back. You don’t know that about me yet, but you will.

Speaking of looking back (see what I mean? Already, day one…), I was sitting at a table a few Sunday’s ago with a group of people, talking over Letters and Papers from Prison written by a Lutheran Theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer who, right? That’s what I said. And, theology? You thought this was going to be a whimsical talk about the new year, thought I might bust out with my outline of writing goals. Maybe you’re wondering why, on that particular Sunday morning, I wasn’t sitting at a coffee shop working on that novel? A very good question. I can see you’re going to keep me to task this year. But, to answer your question would mean going over the list I mentioned, and you might get confused why I would put “avoiding the novel” under things I did and not under things I wish I hadn’t done. So, hear me out.

First off, I wasn’t doing much of the talking at the table. Mostly, I was obsessing about the fact that I didn’t grow up Lutheran and I’d never heard of this Bonhoeffer fellow, who was apparently quite important and influential, and it sort of felt like one of those moments when you’re a writer and you’re sitting in a room with a bunch of other–really great–writers who know their stuff and you think, my god, they’ll finally see how I’ve been faking it all this time. Like, maybe, if I feign ill, I could cut out quick, before things fall apart. You know? These people were smart.

Anyway, I didn’t cut out. I had committed to this Bonhoeffer business. Plus, I was a little penned in between tight seats and sitting right across from the pastor (a kind-hearted man, no doubt, but still…the pastor). So, I stayed. Good thing, too, because, just after my obsessive string of thoughts tapered off, someone read aloud from one of Bonhoeffer’s letters where he quotes a verse in Ecclesiastes:

Everything has ‘its hour’: [‘]…to weep and…to laugh:…to embrace…and to refrain from embracing;…to tear and…to sew…and God seeks out what has gone by.’

Now, I don’t know if you favor Lutherans or if you’re pro-Universe. You’re just a New Year. What does it matter? Focus in with me on those first four words:

Everything has its hour

Even the elusive words of a theologian in prison. That’s when I started paying attention, and that’s when, as the same someone continued to read Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of the verse, I heard a message that fits right in with you and me and Auld Lang Syne:

[W]hen the longing for something past overtakes us–and this occurs at completely unpredictable times–then we can know that that is only one of the many ‘hours’ that God still has in store for us, and then we should seek out that past again, not by our own effort but with God.

You know what I love about that passage? Validation that nostalgia “overtakes” us (I love that word)–when we least expect it. So, looking back is inevitable. I can’t help it, and neither can you. Everything has its hour: joy, regret, anticipation. Those lists of what I did or didn’t do? They’re acceptable, even encouraged. But there’s more.

I have to take care not to seek out the past–or the future, for that matter–alone or I will get lost. You don’t have to be Lutheran or religious of any sort to appreciate Bonhoeffer’s words. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reminisced over 1992 and lost hours in the current day, and it had nothing to do with going to church.

…we should seek out that past again….

Maybe I do that in conversation with God.
Or, over coffee with a good friend.
Maybe I reason things out with my Dad late one evening, after we’ve just said goodbye to someone who lived a long and full life, when hearts are open and the house is quiet and the crescent moon hangs down instead of upright. Holding water as my Dad would say.

Holding. At a standstill. But not for long.

Lots to imagine, Ms. Brand New Year, lots in store. It’s 2014. …Fourteen! 

My word, this calls for more coffee.