Faith, Auld Lang Syne
And Another New Year
I take this New Year’s Eve moment to talk about time and how only lately has it felt that I am an unwilling passenger on a runaway train that is out of control, speeding to a destination that is totally unknown, going who knows where.
It’s not a new feeling as from time to time I have felt that time was passing me by but now it has taken on a much more painful edge with the pandemic and the attacks on our way of life. I know that I have no control over the passage of time but in order to survive, I have to constantly fool myself. I have always felt a measure of powerless but now it is nearly overwhelming, the feeling that I spent the past 18 months waiting for it to end and it never did and I cannot even guess what more it will bring. Has it been just 18 months or 18 years since the pandemic struck. They say the pandemic will peak in mid-January but I can’t help but feel this is a cruel joke and that there will be another strain after omicron is defeated. And I did everything they told me to do.
Optimism is a quality that usually masks pessimism and in that, I mean, that even the most optimistic people must scrape the veneer and realize that the when they are naked they realize the frustration of feeling out of control of the forces that govern their lives.
I know that I have never been in control of my destiny and feeling in control if a delusion that has helped me through some trying times. When I was feeling so naked, I could tell myself that tomorrow I can wake up to a new day and new hope. Now, I’m not so sure. The COVID-19 pandemic has continuously kicked me in the teeth and there seems to be no let up. What is most confounding is how each day seems to bring more upsetting news, whether it is the highly contagious omicron strain, the concerns over the legitimacy of home COVID-19 tests, the many people who still have not been vaccinated, it all congeals and makes it hard to breath. The irony is that, even without COVID-19, we continue to slowly kill ourselves, whether it is through climate change that could not be more obvious, or self-destructive acts like overeating, drug use, smoking to deal with an internal condition, whether physical or psychological or both or just a failure to engage in life. It is all much more destructive than the COVID-19 various and yet we focus on the virus because it is an easy target and I suppose because we are hopeful that it is one battle we can win while we can’t come out on top in the battles of overeating, overindulging and self-denial.
The dangers of COVID-19 are still under examination but it is clear that many, many people do recover after having relatively minor symptoms while many others die. Although I am highly skeptical of the term “relatively” when it comes to the effects of the virus.
And it has become increasingly clear that those who get two vaccinations and a booster will very likely either not get the omicron strain or if they do, it will be relatively mild, there’s that relative word again. So with such an absence of facts, we have a choice to believe the worst or the best scenarios and to follow the one constant so far and that is to get the vaccinations. To do otherwise is to laugh in the face of possible death or “relative” pain.
When I feel the luxury of optimism I think about waking up tomorrow and reading of an incredible cure for the plague and how as quickly as it devoured us, that quickly will it peter away into oblivion. But like catching the wind, it is so hard to hold on to such optimism in the face of facts. And in my more hopeful moments, I think about how generations have suffered their own plagues and somehow dug out of them and how life has continued, babies have continued being born, lovers have loved, grandmothers have held grandchildren and that the sun always rises. But it is so easy to feel hope slip like sand through my fingers and then I remember how that is one of the essential elements of life, that life ends and that it is to be honored and squeezed for every loving moment possible. In a sense we all have a terminal disease but in that communal knowledge, we have the opportunity to reach out to others, knowing that in the end we are exactly the same. There is a reason that every religion has preached the same love for others, every religion has claimed that the only explanation for our world will never be known to us, that is the nature of the powerful unknown. There is nothing new under the sun, only different names. We have our pandemic, other generations had their wars, their diseases, their tyrants but also their champions, those who lived holy lives in the best ways they knew. I think that is my challenge, that we live because we can and to realize that there will be wonder in the future and yes, eventually, there will be new and possibly more dire challenges but then there is life.
So this New Year will come as the earth begins another orbit around the sun, racing at around 67,000 miles per hour into an unknown future. It is the mystery of the gods, a concept that humanity has grappled with always. And a new year is defined differently in other cultures, the system commonly used to day was created by Pope Gregory XIII in the late 16th century, Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, arrived in September and the coming Lunar New Year will begin on Feb. 1, when the Year of the Ox, representing fortitude and strength, will give way to the Year of the Tiger, which some hope is a sign of roaring back.
I’ll end with the pious words of Leonard Cohen.
“Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor falls, the major lifts
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Well, maybe there’s a God above
As for me all I’ve ever learned from love
Is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
But it’s not a crime that you’re hear tonight
It’s not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the Light
No, it’s a cold and it’s a very broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Instrumental
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Well people I’ve been here before
I know this room and I’ve walked this floor
You see I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
But listen love, love is not some kind of victory march, no
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And I remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove she was moving too
And every single breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Now I’ve done my best, I know it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come here to London just to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand right here before the Lord of song
With nothing, nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah.”
And this:
“We two have run about the slopes,
And picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
Since auld lang syne.”