A wise essay by one of my longtime teachers, Michael Meade. ― Molly
Dear Friends,
January derives its name from Janus, the old god of gates and doorways and thus, thresholds and transitions. Depictions of Janus show two faces looking in opposite directions, representing the old and the new. The backward looking face of Janus appears in modern rituals of reviewing the year and composing lists of the best and worst events. Looking the other way, Janus appears behind predictions for the coming year and in all the New Year resolutions for improvement that people make.
On a deeper level, Janus represents the opposition of the time-bound and the timeless and the ancient sense that there can be no real change unless we are touched by timeless things. The old understanding was that the backward glance of Janus went all the way back to the darkness and chaos that existed before the creation of the world. Because chaos and darkness were there at the very beginning, for things to truly begin again, both chaos and creation must be involved.
The old idea was not simply to turn the page or change a number on the calendar and simply start over again; that way leads to the next world being just like this one. Rather the world had to be symbolically dissolved before it could be created anew. Time has to be not just stopped, but broken open in order to break the spell and the hold that the dying year has on life.
By any measure 2020 has been a dark and chaotic year marked by great suffering and loss of life, as well as harsh cultural conflicts and unnecessary cruelty. Many people are truly ready to be done with the old year and find ways to start anew.
In that sense, the common desire to be rid of this troubled year coincides with the ancient understanding of how a New Year transition works. For, more important than making resolutions for the coming year was the need to acknowledge the mistakes and errors, the wounds and losses that troubled and darkened the past year.
At the end of a year that has made us all feel weary and worn out, the sense of rejuvenation that was the aim of traditional New Year’s rites may be of great importance. The old idea was to avoid dragging the sins and errors of the past, with their associated levels of guilt, directly into the coming year. While it is too much to expect that those in power, or trying to hold onto power, would actually acknowledge all the mistakes made in terms of facing the pandemic crisis, the climate emergency or the crises of racism and injustice, it does not mean that we cannot face our own mistakes and failures and find a sense of self-forgiveness and thus be redeemed a little and become more able to genuinely start anew.
In that sense, anything that can signify a return to the origins and potentials of life can serve as a rite of transition. Something as simple as sitting and praying in darkness before lighting candles or a fire to bring back the light can break time open. But because the current world seems to be on fire, I find myself drawn to old ideas of dissolving time and washing away the mistakes and faults of the past by immersing in water or washing with water drawn before sunrise. The sense of washing away and cleansing before the New Year was not simply a rite of purification, but also a preparation for a new birth, a baptismal way of participating in the re-generation of both time and life.
Timelessness is the obliteration of time and in timelessness is the forgiveness of time. And, there can be no meaningful change without letting go and allowing ourselves to be touched by the timeless, without feeling free enough to forgive ourselves and thereby be released from the need to repeat the mistakes of the past. In the threshold shaped by the old year dying and the new one being born, a timeless moment occurs and even a small dip into the sorrow of the world can lead to places of forgiveness through which time itself becomes renewed, through which life becomes redeemed and everything can start anew.
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