New Year Revolutions

No, that isn’t a typo or a misspelling. I meant to write revolutions instead of resolutions. I like the image of revolving instead of resolving. Revolving implies a turning around. Resolving implies standing firm, and I’d rather be in motion. Turning around creates images of dancing; standing firm, well…of standing still. I heard someone the other day say that they thought New Year resolutions were ridiculous. And although I never made them until two years ago, I disagree. If New Year resolutions are ridiculous, then so are Lent and Ramadan and Yom Kippur and examinations of conscience and the sacrament of reconciliation. New Year resolutions are the secular equivalent of an integral aspect of these religious acknowledgements of the need for renewal; of metanoia. Typically though, in religious imagery the movement is often signified as a “turning away from,” i.e., a turning away from sin or evil or vice or self-absorption. Indeed there may be an awareness that ultimately the turning away from sin is intended also to be accompanied by a turning towards God, but sometimes this latter gets lost in the pre-occupation with the ascetic practice itself.

 

There are those who view Lent as an opportunity to lose weight or to quit smoking and if they have lost five pounds by Easter Sunday, they consider their Lenten sacrifice to have been successful. But they have grown no closer to their God, and they have changed not a whit with respect to a kinder, more compassionate or self-reflective inner self. There are those who will follow the Lenten obligation not to eat meat on Fridays, but will visit the nearest seafood restaurant and order five-pound Maine lobsters dripping in butter. Clearly they observe the letter of the law, but its spirit escapes them entirely. Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote, “In the search for God, if one concentrates on the way, all one will find is the way.” If someone who loves chocolate decides to give up chocolate, then all they think about is the self-denial of chocolate and how difficult it is not to have chocolate. Easter Sunday then becomes The Day I Can Eat Chocolate Again, rather than the day Christians believe that Jesus defied history and rose from the dead. This is what Meister Eckhart meant.

 

I remember when I was teaching at Bay-View Academy, an all-girls Catholic High School in Rhode Island. Every time we needed or wanted to celebrate the sacraments we had to invite a local priest to preside over the ritual for us. Typically, the priest was a stranger to us. He didn’t spend time with us and didn’t know who we were. He was an outsider, present in a place which attempted to create community inside and outside the classroom. Now, if women were ordained in the Roman Catholic Church it might have been possible to have a liturgy celebrated by one of us; someone who actually belonged to our community and who knew us. But this was not possible. So a stranger would come in and address the assembly of 700 girls, young women and teachers (with an occasional male teacher thrown into the mix). During one Ash Wednesday service (the day which marks the beginning of Lent) there we were, assembled in the school auditorium while a local priest began his sermon. His message was not about renewal but about self-denial. At one point in his sermon he paused for dramatic effect and with what I can only describe as disdain, he said to us, “Give something up, Girls… for a change.” His assumptions about us were clear. He assumed that all the girls at Bay-View were privileged and wealthy, concerned only for themselves and their own comforts. He assumed that for us, the road to Lenten renewal could only be achieved through self-denial because after all, we were such spoiled brats to begin with. I was furious.

 

When the service was over and we returned to the classroom, I gave my students a different sermon because I knew that within those walls were girls who had already “given up” much; there were girls who had lost parents to cancer or whose parents were attempting  to recover from it. There were girls who suffered from anorexia, bulimia, self-mutilation and self-loathing. There were girls who suffered the indignities of social ostracism because they were fat or gay or pregnant or not quite up to our culture’s standard of beauty. There were girls who were there on scholarship and whose parents both worked two jobs to provide for their families. There were girls whose best friends had died, whose parents were embattled in bitter divorces and girls whose worlds for a variety of reasons were crumbling all around them. I told them that the priest had been wrong. Lent is not about self-denial.  It is about renewal and sometimes renewal means you do something wonderful for yourself; to re-create yourself. And I wondered out loud what that priest would be denying himself, for Lent.

 

And so I approach New Year revolutions as opportunities for twirling around; for creating opportunities to learn, to grow and to become.

 

Typically when I create a revolutions list, I include things on it that I can accomplish easily, today (so I do not feel like a complete failure) and others that are so unlikely they will turn up on next year’s list again.  #1 on my list was also #1 on last year’s list and on 2005’s list:

 

1.  Kiss Bob Dylan.

 

2.  Learn to cook Moroccan. (Ok… also on last year’s  list, but at least I bought the cookbooks).

3.  Brush up on my French.

 

4.  Eat more chocolate.

 

5.  Visit a place I’ve never been.

 

6.  Finish that quilt I started 5 years ago.

 

7.  Read Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

 

8.  Publish a poem, or a paper.

 

9.  Go to Paris.

 

10.  Return students’ papers to them more quickly (sigh).

11.  Be more patient with the arrogant.

 

12.  Learn more about wine.

 

13.  Paint a self-portrait.

 

14.  Drink less coffee (not likely).

 

15.  Attend at least one opera or ballet in NYC.

 

16.  Take the Christmas tree down (this is the thing I can cross off today...maybe).

 

17.  Learn to identify at least 10 constellations.

 

18.  Wear that faux fur, leopard print, red satin-lined, car length coat hanging in  the closet (all the while hearing Bob Dylan sing, “Your brand new leopard skin pillbox hat”).

 

19.  Get another tattoo.

 

20. Get married (HA!!!  GOTCHYA!!!).

 

Happy New Year, Y'all.

 

Oops. Later Addition to list:

Note to Quixote:

#21. Start that book you have been relentlessly bugging me to write.