Year/Change

One year.

It is amazing how much can change, happen, or cease within the span of a year. New chapters begin, even as other books close. Old fears are overcome as new fears begin haunting us. Unexpected connections, new ideas and blossoming relationships renew us. How can we even begin to absorb, let alone process, everything that touches our lives within the span of a year?

I'm one of those lucky people who gets to have multiple opportunities each year for annual reflection. (That sentence reads like one long oxymoron, but bear with me.) My favorite secular holiday is New Year's eve/day - champagne, kissing, the opportunity for a clean slate, resolutions. What's not to like? So January brings me one new year. Then over on the Jewish holiday circuit, each fall, there's Rosh Hashanah - apples, honey, kissing (okay, so kissing cheeks more than kissing-kissing, but nevertheless), the opportunity for a clean slate, reflection. Again - what's not to like?

I need reflection. Thus, it seems to make sense that I'd require multiple new years. (Clearly, someone up there knew what they were doing when they doled me out an extra helping of let's-start-again.) Of course, even with the generous helping of new year celebrations in my life, I'm always seeking more opportunities to stop and reflect, remember where I was a year ago, who I was with for this day in some other year. I seize on holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, lifecycle events (weddings and funerals, in particular, but the occasional baptism or bar mitzvah can also provide ample opportunity for reflection).

So I have lots of practice reflecting. But this year - from last autumn to this autumn - has bested me: I can't sum it up.

Anything pithy seems weak. In my own life and the lives of those around me, there has been so much joy and so much pain in the past year. The pendulum swung to one side and brought us unanticipated health struggles, deaths of loved ones, heartbreak at the end of relationships. It swung to the other and brought new opportunities for love, exciting life changes, inspiration, and of course, those ever-symbolic little babies (including a very cute redheaded one in Massachusetts). A simple listing of such events doesn't capture their impact, and for some reason, reflect and remember as I might, I cannot find a way to convey how this year, so much more than any other, propelled so many of us forward into the next phase of our life, alternately soothing and mercilessly pummeling us along the way.

The traditional Jewish greeting on Rosh Hashanah is "L'Shanah Tovah" - "to a good year." Shanah, the Hebrew word for "year," has another meaning: "change." The root letters for the two words are the same: shanah shapes the word year, and its sister word, change. It is one of those goosebump-linguistic moments, where the simple relationships of words begins to scratch the surface of something much larger: we cannot encounter a year without experiencing change. If we do not change, and we remain static, over the course of a year... we have not really embraced that year. Change can be wonderful, and change can be bitterly painful; but change is life, and each shanah brings the next shanah.

That's all I have to offer, after all my reflection for this year; I will leave you with an excerpt from the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, called in some prayerbooks "A Prayer for the United States of America" and in others, simply, "A Prayer for Our Nation," which emphasizes the kind of change I hope to see from our country and all countries:*

Grant us peace, Your most precious gift, O Eternal Source of peace, and give us the will to proclaim its message to all the peoples of the earth. Bless our country that it may always be a stronghold of peace, and its advocate among the nations. May contentment reign within its borders, health and happiness within its homes. Strengthen the bonds of friendship among the inhabitants of all lands ... Blessed is the Eternal God, the Source of peace.


*Not to go all political or anything, but it IS true that my next annual opportunity for reflection will fall in January... and in January 2009, we'll be swearing in a new president, and I hope the change reflected above (LET THE UNITED STATES BE A STRONGHOLD OF PEACE AND ITS ADVOCATE AMONG THE NATIONS!) is the sort of change that will seem optimistic, but not unrealistic. L'shanah tovah!