Can vs Should

I go to church a lot and often attend services at different churches. Recently, I experienced two churches that delivered very different messages. The contrast helped me see something I want to remember throughout this new year.

In the first, the message was all about our sacred duty to make the world a better place. Every sermon was about what we ought to do for the poor, how we should love of neighbors, and how we are obligated to be peacemakers in a world filled with conflict. While I could not argue with a thing the minister said (in every sermon), I left each week feeling chided, badgered, and overwhelmed with all the shoulds, oughts and obligations.

In the second, the focus was on the love of God. It was a message delivered in a variety of ways, but we were reminded of the wonder of grace and the new life available to us all. The result left me inspired, wanting to take that good news and make a difference in the lives of others. Unlike the first, I left the second church feeling as if “air was put in my spiritual tires,” as a friend puts it. I left wanting to help the poor and love my neighbors not because I ought to but because I get to.

It all came down to the perspective, and that’s a helpful message as we begin a new year. We can compile a to-do list full of resolutions and goals, but such a list will leave us overwhelmed. Soon, we will put the list aside and go back to business as usual. But if we realize that we have been given another year, been given more time with people we love and a chance to make a difference in the world, suddenly we live our lives out of gratitude and optimism.

No, we might not do all that we want, we might not do things as well as we hope, but we’ve been given the chance that many others have not. Let’s receive the gift of another year, another day, and see what is possible when we focus on the gift and not the list, the can and not the should.

IDEA: Instead of making a list of goals and/or resolutions, write a letter to yourself which you will seal and not read until December 31, 2025. Have a conversation with your future self, describing your hopes for the new year. (My daughter did this and was delighted to be able to compare her hopes with the year she ended up having.)

Stables

I awaken before dawn. It’s not difficult in these shorter days, but this morning as I sat in my study the darkness looked particularly dark. After a moment or two, I noticed a lighted tree in a neighbor’s front yard. It wasn’t a house just across the street. It was through trees and across another street, but the contrast between the morning’s darkness and the tree’s lights made it easy to see. Sunlight would diminish the contrast an hour later making the lights harder to spot, but it was clear I had been given all I needed to make sense of this special time of year.

I meet with men and women who struggle mightily this time of year. To live a different way, to refrain from “doing Christmas like normal people,” as someone said, is a challenge of herculean proportion. Someone pointed out the life-saving importance of changing one’s focus: “You need to look not at the challenge, but the solution.” Like the view out my window, the important thing is to look not at the darkness but the light.

We are surrounded by darkness. Whether we look out at the world, our country, or our own particular lives, the darkness can be overwhelming. It can be all we see, but across the street, through trees and bushes, there’s light to be seen – not just one but a cluster shining in the midst of all that darkness. I can focus on the darkness, or I can change my focus and look at the light.

The world’s light might rise soon making it more difficult to see the lights, but I can hold onto this moment and the truth that there is a true light. It is a light that shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot consume it.  The world will try to diminish it with its own false light, but this is the time of year to change our focus and look at nothing but the light that no darkness or false light can take away.

Dancing Backwards

“A rational creature consciously … reverses the acts the acts by which we fell, treads Adam’s dance backward, and returns.”

C. S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain

On a good day, I’ve given up hoping for a better past. Regardless how silly it is to want to erase certain moments, take back particular comments, or return to opportunities I let pass by, I sometimes find myself wanting to do just that even though I know it’s impossible. This passage from C. S. Lewis, however, made me see that there is something I can do today about what I did yesterday. I can tread “Adam’s dance backwards.”

People in recovery call it a “living amends,” but maybe we should call it, “dancing backwards.” When I refrain from using humor in a way that sometimes hurts, I’m dancing backwards. When I don’t think only of myself and put someone’s well-being ahead of mine, I’m dancing backwards. When I choose the harder right over the easier wrong, I’m dancing backwards.

A wise person once said to me when I was struggling to climb out of a hole of my own creating: “You can start by stop digging!” Now I know he was inviting me dance in a new way, a new direction. He was inviting me to dance backwards.

The music remains same; it’s the dance that changes.