Yes, it is the beginning of a Civil New Year.
There are things to which to adjust
... I need a new accordion folder for the bills I pay this year
... I must remember to change the year to 2011 on those checks I write, although nowadays I pay most of my bills by computer
... I can now calculate the amounts I will claim in various categories on deductions for the tax year just ended
... perhaps some of my students will ask me about my Resolutions or want to share theirs
Yet for me, January 1 falls in the midst of several overlapping annual cycles, only one of which closely approximates that of the civil year - today is the 4th day of our 26th year of marriage, as our silver anniversary fell on Wednesday.
Today I reflect on various of those cycles - that of my life, of the live of Leaves on the Current, of the Church year, of the school year.
Most of all I reflect on our life together.
I will turn 65 in May. I am not allowed to forget it - several times a week the U.S. mail will contain yet another offer for some aspect of Medicare. I will at some point have to sit down and calculate what that means for financing of my health care - it is one option among several. That milestone otherwise means little - I have to reach 66 for full Social Security benefits. I am already eligible to retire from teaching for an inadequate pension, something I could only do were I to accept other employment, either in a school district in another state or in some kind of non-teaching position. At present I am not inclined to do either - because of my age I will consider the possible alternatives each year, but so long as I can teach with integrity I cannot imagine not doing so. May 23 will be a milestone, like December 29 was for the two of us: something to be noted, but which changes little in how we live.
Leaves is at a different point of her life. This is the final month of another year for her, ending January 29. It is not a year divisible by 5, so it does not carry the same weight, still, once one passes the half century each additional year carries increasing significance just by reaching it. Perhaps we can both be grateful that the words of a Tennessee Ernie Ford song from before she was born do not quite apply: "Another year older and deeper in debt" - although for too many of our fellow citizens that has been the pattern.
Leaves and I were married in the Orthodox Church. The annual cycle of celebrations can be marked from many points, but officially it begins September 1. Yes, each successive Christmas matters, as does even more so the Paschal cycle commemoration death, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost. One might at this time of year note that the civil New Year is bracketed between Christmas and Epiphany, the latter being the date when traditionally the Eastern church celebrated Jesus's entry into the world, the start of his public ministry after being baptized by John the Baptist. Today is a minor feast, one that were people to remember might limit some of the anti-Semitism that has been too much a part of the Church's history in Europe. It is the 8th day of the life of Jesus, and like any good Jewish boy, on this day he was circumcised - it is the Feast of Circumcision. It is also in the Eastern Church the feast day of St. Basil the Great, a day when instead of the normal liturgy, named after John Chrysostom, instead the Eastern churches celebrate a slightly different liturgy, otherwise normally celebrated on the Sundays of Great Lent, known as the Liturgy of St. Basilo.
My life is largely defined by my vocation as school teacher. The school year has its own cycle. Our academic year begins in August and runs to June. We are right now not quite through the 2nd of four quarters, or if you prefer the first of two semesters, since some courses only run for half the school year. My classes will sit for a semester exam on January 19 per the central school administration. That entire week will be exams. I have to adjust my planning not to overburden them with reading for me that they will not be doing because they will be studying for exams in other courses. Thus I have only two weeks of real instructional time left in this quarter/semester before they become overwhelmed by the cycle of exams. For many, it will take one-two days simply to get back into the rhythm of classes and school work. I was called for Jury Duty beginning Monday, for four days, which would have been a disaster for some of my students. I offered to serve instead in April, during Spring break, but I am called for this term, which surprisingly enough ends this month. While technically I COULD get a substitute, I cannot for my AP classes get one who can move the class forward, so I was excused. I would love to serve on a jury, but I always get eliminated in voir dire, and the jury coordinator decided there really was not much point in my wasting the four days.
December 29, 1985, Leaves on the Current and I were married in Bethesda MD. Before I became a teacher, we had originally planned to again rent Oatlands Plantation near Leesburg, where we held our reception, to celebrate the milestone. We commemorate as well the beginning of our relationship in 1974, first by a chance encounter at Bryn Mawr train station on September 21, then our first date on September 27. Still, marriage carries great significance for both of us.
We needed special permission to get married that day - the weeks between Christmas and Epiphany are not normally times for weddings in the Orthodox Church, but we needed a time when family members would all be on the East Coast, and the church gave us a dispensation. This time of year is therefore also one where we remember not only the marriage, but the events that followed immediately.
We spent our first night in the Virginia countryside, at The Little River Inn
On December 30, we had lunch with friends at The Red Fox Inn in Middleburg, visited historic Sully Plantation, home of Richard Bland Lee of Virginia's first Congressional delegation, then boarded a plane to California.
we spent that night near San Juan Capistrano, and on the last day of the year visited its historic MissioM before driving South towards San Diego, spending the night in La Jolla.
25 years ago today we spent part of the day with friends, visiting the San Diego Zoo. The husband was the officer of the day on an aircraft carrier, and we could have had dinner in the ward room, except that we had to be at LAX by 6:30 for our flight to the Southwest.
25 years ago this evening we got on a big bird to French Polynesia, to Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora-Bora.
At this time of the year we remember those events, which marked the beginning of our marriage.
We also reflect back on another trip at this time of the year. In December of 1979, Leaves had graduated from Harvard and was in her first year at University College Oxford as a Marshall Scholar. On December 26 we flew to Europe where we began our first major trip together. There was tourism, and there was lots of music. In Munich we saw Hansel und Gretel. In Vienna we saw Rosenkavalier and she saw Cosi Fan Tutti (I was sick that night). In Salzburg we heard chamber music and Haydn's Mass in Tempore Belli. We eventually finished first in London, then in Oxford, where I left her for the rest of her academic year as I returned home.
Seasons and cycles.
We are in near the beginning of our 26th year as man and wife. We are somewhat further along our 37th year of being together. We have been together for more than half of each of our lives, but we also know that regardless of what the future may hold, that is but a tiny portion of the time we will share together. We are bound for whatever eternity there may be.
It is in reflecting on that which matters. That is, the things that may irritate either or both of us can somehow properly be placed on the scale of what matters. We have spent much time, many annual cycles, together. It matters not if we mark the passage of time by our first date, our marriage and honeymoon, either of our birthdays, or the civil New Year. Each successive cycle is part of a continuity of something much larger.
There is something important that comes with the recognition of that continuity. Our being together is something that increases our connection with and our commitment to a larger world. We do not have human offspring of our own. Our natural human desire to leave something behind must therefore take other forms. She is a devoted aunt to the children of her siblings (I have somewhat less contact with my sister's two children, although her daughter and i taught together for 2 years in the 90s), I have my ongoing commitment to the now several thousand students who have passed through my care. We also have increasing commitments to the environment, to equity economic and social, to justice. Somehow our time together and the multiple cycles of years through which we have passed has deepened these commitments.
It is the first day of another civil year. We are not prone to resolutions. I used to joke that I gave up my New Year's resolutions for Lent.
Yet it is more serious. It is for me similar to why I do not take oaths. As a Quaker, and even before I officially joined the Society of Friends, the taking of oaths implies that one does not tell the truth unless under oath. Whether Christian or not, the words of Jesus that one should let one's yeas be yeas and nays be nays carries weight with me. The idea of resolutions made separately at one point of the year at least for me implies that I do not take seriously my responsibility to change - myself and that of the world around me - except at certain formal occasions. Should I see something wrong either in myself or in the world in which I live, can I really justify postponing a commitment to rectify what is within my power to do so until some fixed point on a calendar.
Perhaps that is why I am glad there are so many different overlapping cycles. I am thereby reminded of how far I - and we - have come, while not settling for that, because I also recognize another chance to rededicate myself to making things better.
The cycles overlap. The memories are reencountered. Life is refreshed. Our commitments are renewed.
Our cycles do not coincide. We do not all follow the same religious calendars. Our annual cycles for work may start and end at different times. Not all here are Americans, celebrating another year of national independence at the same time. Certainly our personal commemorations fall at different points on the calendar.
As a world, most celebrate the start of the Civil New Year. The year on the common calendar changes.
Whether that change is the most significant start of a cycle matters not. It is a common cycle.
It provides an occasion to thank those around us for the past year and to offer best wishes for that commencing.
Thank you all for what you have offered us, me in particular, in this community this past calendar year.
May the year upon which we have commenced bring blessings and comforts to you and yours.
And for all of us, may I offer my strongest affirmation of my normal close:
Peace.