So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!
A Year’s End Reflection
given at
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 27, 2020
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
2020 will soon be behind us. A reflection in the rearview mirror of our lives. Judging by the sheer proliferation of merchandise and cards and even events produced and planned bidding farewell, or more usually, good riddance to the last twelve months, sometimes in language I can’t repeat from the pulpit, 2020’s transition from present to past can’t come soon enough.
And to be sure, as I noted in the December newsletter, 2020 has been has been quite a year to say the least. An ongoing global pandemic, a presidential impeachment, stock market crash and rebound, record unemployment, Black Lives Matters protests, wildfires, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a new president-elect, a defeated president who still refuses to concede, and oh yeah, and those murder hornets.
And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s all the usual stuff that happens in any given year. Those less widely known, more personal, and thus often more impactful events from our own lives. Births, deaths; illness, a lost job, a new career, a new school or home, and the like. Changes to our routines, some for the better, others for the worse. Events whose emotional, physical and spiritual toll may feel intensified against the backdrop of an especially harrowing year globally.
And yet, in four days all of these will officially become part of last year. We will have bid 2020 so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.
At least on the calendar, that is.
In truth we will still be dealing with the effects of the events, public and private, of 2020 well into the next year and beyond.
Which is why we might pause before the end of a year that inspired T-shirts emblazoned with a middle finger directed at 2020, lest “2020 was awful” become the only truth we’ve discerned from the last twelve months of life here on earth.
For as Jane Rzepka, quoting Anais Nin reminds us from our reading this morning, “There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of us [them] acquire it, fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”
It’s an apt metaphor.
Several Christmases ago, my husband Kevin gave me what appeared, at first glance, to be a tiny painting of the Colosseum in Rome, not more than an inch in height or length. Upon closer inspection under a magnifying glass, the image is revealed not to be a painting at all, but a mosaic, a micro-mosaic, to be more precise. Thus the image was formed not by the application of paint with a brush, but the careful, sometimes painstaking selection and arrangement of hundreds of tiny pieces of multicolored glass into something recognizable, and in the end, quite beautiful.
In likening the acquisition of truth to the creation of a “laborious mosaic”, Anais Nin cautions us against making instant or total truth claims based on what appears to be obvious at first. This is trickier than it might seem because we tend to prefer answers to questions.
Answers, even when they don’t quite make sense, are convenient. They generally require less investment in thought and thus time. They’re also easier to store. For they fit neatly into our mental drawers and can be tucked away out of sight and out of mind until we need them.
Questions, on the other hand are generally inconvenient. They take time and effort to formulate and to think or reflect on. And the best ones are not easily answered or even definitively answerable. Likewise, they’re often unruly and not easily tucked away or forgotten. Eschewing certitude in favor of faith, they linger, drawing our attention back to them repeatedly over time for deeper reflection.
In his book, “Beyond Words”, Frederich Buechner writing on the topic of questions, notes, “On her deathbed, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, ‘What is the answer?’ Then, after a long silence, ‘What is the question?’” Buechner, a minister, goes on to say people shouldn’t start looking in the Bible for answers, they should start by listening to the questions it asks. Questions he says we tend to lose track of. Questions about things that matter, “life and death questions about meaning, purpose and value. Or what we might call, mosaic building questions.
For Buechner these include questions like this from the Gospel of Matthew,
“For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”
Or this one from Genesis,
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Or from Luke’s gospel,
“Who is my neighbor?”
These are powerful questions whose pondering need not be confined to the traditions from which they emerge. I admire Buechner’s approach to the Bible. It certainly makes it more useful than when it is used as an answer key to life, which too many people, religious or not, treat as a test to be passed or better yet, aced, rather than a miracle to be lived.
And indeed we could apply Buechner’s approach to the writings of any religious or philosophical tradition and beyond.
Not surprisingly, as we read this morning, Jane Rzepka, a Unitarian Universalist would have us take it even further and apply this approach to our everyday life, which is its own form of sacred story. Thus can she hear potential mosaic building questions in questions like, “Can somebody’s curls really ruin a person’s day? How can you tell when the World Series is necessary and when it’s not? and Would parents really make fun of their children?” Questions that deep down have to do with and reveal over time what truly matters, what is worthy of our attention, and how to get along with one another in this often bewildering world. Indeed, she notes that it is by asking everyday questions her children work on their mosaic, and significantly, hearing their questions, she’s nudged to work on her own mosaic.
And if such questions can emerge from advertisements on the radio, television listings and a notice from school, surely they also arise in reflection on events personal and public from the year almost passed.
For everyday questions are simply those which emerge from both our privately lived and publicly shared experience. Questions that form and inform the very histories and ideas we here at BUUC (Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church) strive to share, “with warmth, loving friendship and an open mind.”
As we prepare to send 2020 on its merry way with one foot squarely aimed at its behind, I confess I also find myself reflecting on the year past and wondering,
Who are we?
What is justice?
To whom or what are we ultimately accountable?
Questions for which I might have once had, or a least wanted to believe there was, a definitive answer, but that I now find, as Elie Wiesel wrote, “Possess a power that does not lie in the answer.”
And so, in the days remaining before the new year, I encourage you to set aside some time to reflect on the questions that have emerged for you from events personal and public in 2020.
For it is these questions and others like them asked and pondered by people around the globe that will remain far beyond the events or the year in which they occurred, revealing truth over time that is greater and perhaps more hopeful than what appears perhaps most obvious in the moment to many, that 2020 was an awful year we can’t wait to bid, so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye!
Amen and Blessed Be
A Year’s End Reflection
given at
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 27, 2020
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
2020 will soon be behind us. A reflection in the rearview mirror of our lives. Judging by the sheer proliferation of merchandise and cards and even events produced and planned bidding farewell, or more usually, good riddance to the last twelve months, sometimes in language I can’t repeat from the pulpit, 2020’s transition from present to past can’t come soon enough.
And to be sure, as I noted in the December newsletter, 2020 has been has been quite a year to say the least. An ongoing global pandemic, a presidential impeachment, stock market crash and rebound, record unemployment, Black Lives Matters protests, wildfires, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a new president-elect, a defeated president who still refuses to concede, and oh yeah, and those murder hornets.
And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s all the usual stuff that happens in any given year. Those less widely known, more personal, and thus often more impactful events from our own lives. Births, deaths; illness, a lost job, a new career, a new school or home, and the like. Changes to our routines, some for the better, others for the worse. Events whose emotional, physical and spiritual toll may feel intensified against the backdrop of an especially harrowing year globally.
And yet, in four days all of these will officially become part of last year. We will have bid 2020 so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.
At least on the calendar, that is.
In truth we will still be dealing with the effects of the events, public and private, of 2020 well into the next year and beyond.
Which is why we might pause before the end of a year that inspired T-shirts emblazoned with a middle finger directed at 2020, lest “2020 was awful” become the only truth we’ve discerned from the last twelve months of life here on earth.
For as Jane Rzepka, quoting Anais Nin reminds us from our reading this morning, “There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of us [them] acquire it, fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”
It’s an apt metaphor.
Several Christmases ago, my husband Kevin gave me what appeared, at first glance, to be a tiny painting of the Colosseum in Rome, not more than an inch in height or length. Upon closer inspection under a magnifying glass, the image is revealed not to be a painting at all, but a mosaic, a micro-mosaic, to be more precise. Thus the image was formed not by the application of paint with a brush, but the careful, sometimes painstaking selection and arrangement of hundreds of tiny pieces of multicolored glass into something recognizable, and in the end, quite beautiful.
In likening the acquisition of truth to the creation of a “laborious mosaic”, Anais Nin cautions us against making instant or total truth claims based on what appears to be obvious at first. This is trickier than it might seem because we tend to prefer answers to questions.
Answers, even when they don’t quite make sense, are convenient. They generally require less investment in thought and thus time. They’re also easier to store. For they fit neatly into our mental drawers and can be tucked away out of sight and out of mind until we need them.
Questions, on the other hand are generally inconvenient. They take time and effort to formulate and to think or reflect on. And the best ones are not easily answered or even definitively answerable. Likewise, they’re often unruly and not easily tucked away or forgotten. Eschewing certitude in favor of faith, they linger, drawing our attention back to them repeatedly over time for deeper reflection.
In his book, “Beyond Words”, Frederich Buechner writing on the topic of questions, notes, “On her deathbed, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, ‘What is the answer?’ Then, after a long silence, ‘What is the question?’” Buechner, a minister, goes on to say people shouldn’t start looking in the Bible for answers, they should start by listening to the questions it asks. Questions he says we tend to lose track of. Questions about things that matter, “life and death questions about meaning, purpose and value. Or what we might call, mosaic building questions.
For Buechner these include questions like this from the Gospel of Matthew,
“For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”
Or this one from Genesis,
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Or from Luke’s gospel,
“Who is my neighbor?”
These are powerful questions whose pondering need not be confined to the traditions from which they emerge. I admire Buechner’s approach to the Bible. It certainly makes it more useful than when it is used as an answer key to life, which too many people, religious or not, treat as a test to be passed or better yet, aced, rather than a miracle to be lived.
And indeed we could apply Buechner’s approach to the writings of any religious or philosophical tradition and beyond.
Not surprisingly, as we read this morning, Jane Rzepka, a Unitarian Universalist would have us take it even further and apply this approach to our everyday life, which is its own form of sacred story. Thus can she hear potential mosaic building questions in questions like, “Can somebody’s curls really ruin a person’s day? How can you tell when the World Series is necessary and when it’s not? and Would parents really make fun of their children?” Questions that deep down have to do with and reveal over time what truly matters, what is worthy of our attention, and how to get along with one another in this often bewildering world. Indeed, she notes that it is by asking everyday questions her children work on their mosaic, and significantly, hearing their questions, she’s nudged to work on her own mosaic.
And if such questions can emerge from advertisements on the radio, television listings and a notice from school, surely they also arise in reflection on events personal and public from the year almost passed.
For everyday questions are simply those which emerge from both our privately lived and publicly shared experience. Questions that form and inform the very histories and ideas we here at BUUC (Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church) strive to share, “with warmth, loving friendship and an open mind.”
As we prepare to send 2020 on its merry way with one foot squarely aimed at its behind, I confess I also find myself reflecting on the year past and wondering,
Who are we?
What is justice?
To whom or what are we ultimately accountable?
Questions for which I might have once had, or a least wanted to believe there was, a definitive answer, but that I now find, as Elie Wiesel wrote, “Possess a power that does not lie in the answer.”
And so, in the days remaining before the new year, I encourage you to set aside some time to reflect on the questions that have emerged for you from events personal and public in 2020.
For it is these questions and others like them asked and pondered by people around the globe that will remain far beyond the events or the year in which they occurred, revealing truth over time that is greater and perhaps more hopeful than what appears perhaps most obvious in the moment to many, that 2020 was an awful year we can’t wait to bid, so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye!
Amen and Blessed Be
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