As I was putting the finishing touches on some hopeful, forward pointing thoughts for 2021, planned for release on the Feast of the Epiphany, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol began.  That event, the culmination of forces at play in our world for much longer than an election cycle, happened just six blocks from my home.  Needless to say, the events of January 6 and the continued tension in which we are living change some of what I had written, but not all.  And so, now for some amended thoughts about the turning of the calendar, because, in so many ways, January 1, 2021, was hardly the first day of the new year.

In many ways, even though it may not feel like it, the events of January 6, 2021, were indeed the end of something old and the beginning of something new. And so was the turning of the year from 2021 to 2022.  That day, I ended something, a project I began awhile ago. I finished it on New Year’s Day because it seemed important to finish it, even though I didn’t understand why.

Okay, that was dramatic. But for the last six months, I have been doing the painstaking work of deconstructing one blog, reading its parts, and moving those parts to other locations.  It has been a six-month transition away from what was formerly known as sevierlybaptist.com, “the musings of a progressive Baptist in an Episcopal world.”  This seemingly technical task has been, unknown to me as I painstakingly walked through the steps of transition, an act of spiritual integration and homecoming.

That blog began as an assignment for a writing class at the beginning of my time at the Virginia Theological Seminary.  I continued it as an account of my learning and formation during my seminary studies.  I thought at that time, back in 2012, that I needed to separate my two worlds, my two selves (so to speak), my “seminary self” and my “singing self,” so I continued to write in both in that blog and in this one, sometimes on the same day but from a different perspective.  Eventually, I created another blog, Subversive Light, around my ministry as a spiritual director and retreat leader and teacher, and another, What We Are Reading Now, to consider the role of individual books and authors in my life and my formation.  Those two centers of communication still exist, although I wouldn’t say that they have thrived during these past years, particularly not during our current pandemic times.  But for now, they live and have being on their own; it is this particular integration, the merging of my Baptist/seminary self and my musical/theological self, that has had my attention.

Oh, I could wax all Jungian  and talk about my process of individuation and integration, but I won’t do that here and now. And I won’t go on and on about the lost shards of light and the Tikkun of Lurianic kabbalah as I do sometimes, because you can follow the links if you are interested.  I will say, however, that in this process, this weird administrative action, that I feel like I recovered something of myself that was lost, and I am glad to have her back.

The process was so mechanical for so long, and then it wasn’t. The energy and intent of my actions became profoundly clear for me when I read these New Year’s words offered by my friend at Dragonfly Reiki:

RELEASE any resentment or unforgiveness you are carrying in your heart related to a past situation. If it is causing you pain, then your pain from the original injustice has been multiplied. You didn’t deserve it then, and you don’t deserve it now. This old anger and resentment also may have the unfortunate effect of attracting similar situations and injustices because you are not free of its energy. It’s time to trade pain for peace. (Dana Lisa Young, correspondence, December 30, 2020) 

“You didn’t deserve it then, and you don’t deserve it now.”  I cannot tell you how those words set me free.  Reading them, sitting with them, it was then and only then that I began to understand the gravity of the task just completed.  I have been carrying a lot of pain about the years that saw the birth of sevierlybaptist.com.  You will see some of it if you read the words that have been written here, now all in one place.  I know that I did, as I copied and transferred each and every entry.

Rereading, devouring again these many words of reflection, written over so many years, led me to understand this statement by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, whose words have been bouncing around in my head for weeks: “You can’t just jump to hope,” the presiding bishop said afterward. “There’s a process you have to go through. There are no shortcuts to it.”  (Religion News Service, November 11, 2020).

You can’t just jump to hope.  You have to walk, or crawl, or persist to hope.  And despite everything, I seem to have found just a little bit of it, but only by looking at the present through the eyes of the person who walked toward this moment in time.  And in this moment, when hope seems to be in short supply, I am holding fast to this invitation to let hope take its time.

A little over a year ago, I began to have a glimmer of change, and began to write again in these digital pages.  I struggled with creativity, the stress of these times has slowed me down creatively, just as that stress has slowed everything else down.  Before the world was called to take a timeout, I wrote these words as I took up the keyboard and music again:

The question: how could I ever keep from singing? Well, I couldn’t. And here, in these pages, I tell my personal story of redemption through a life in music, with music, and without music. Honestly, I thought that part of the road was over, but lately, I’m feeling like I have more to say. In fact, I’ve come to understand that the song just can’t be separated from the journey after all. So, here we go again. Yes, this story is not over yet. I hope that you will join me for a few steps along the way.

I think that we do a disservice when we consider our lives as a road that goes ever onward, into the horizon, until it doesn’t.  Life just isn’t that simple.  We, as creations of a loving God, are not that simple.  I used to think in terms of twists and turns but always onward, but what if that is not the metaphor?  What if the road is more like a series of merge lanes and complicated interchanges, that loop and take us on a detour but always end up back in the same place, the true Self, a true Self which does not understand the ideas of progress or direction.  In fact, that Self might be just behind our shoulder, waiting for us to turn around.

That’s right.  I turned around.  And then I turned back.  And my view was both broadened and narrowed, broadened to embrace more of a world that I had been blinded to by pain and narrowed as I was able to focus a little better on some of the important things that I had forgotten, about me, about life, about love, about music.

And so, with the click of a mouse on the first calendar day of 2021, I started anew by finishing something very old.  Who knew?  And who knows what possibilities lie ahead if I will just walk, not try to jump, to hope.