IN SYNCH WITH THE UNIVERSE [R, 1-1-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—IN SYNCH WITH THE UNIVERSE  [R, 1-1-26]

 

I recently came across a column that I started for New Year’s Day 12 years ago. I did not finish it, however, so I did not post it. I was only 77 then, so I thought the mentioned Quaker was old. Here is the 2014 column:

I know of a man, a Quaker, 90 years old, who, when he awakes in the morning, lies in bed a while “getting in sync with the universe.” I would like to do that, but when I awake in the morning, I need to get in sync with the bathroom, without waiting for the universe to come around. Maybe that’s the difference between Quakers and Methodists.

I’m not very often in sync with the universe, and it’s usually my body, or some part of my body, that is the cause of my dis-synchronicity.

It is the first morning of the new year, 2014, as I write this. I grew up with the understanding that what happens the first day of the year will be the agenda for the rest of the year. Grandma Pond always served cabbage on New Year’s Day, for that meant one would have money the rest of the year. If gas is money, then she was right; otherwise, not so much.

What I most need to do in this new year of my winter season is to get rid of stuff I don’t need for the future. [And perhaps work on making my sentences less convoluted and obfuscatory.] Maybe that is how one who cannot lie in bed in the morning gets in sync with the universe, by getting rid of stuff the universe doesn’t need.

Since the Salvation Army and the recycling center are not open today to receive my excess t-shirts and newspapers, I am looking through file folders, the kind that hold papers, those things that only old people remember, those thin sheets of stuff on which we wrote great ideas in the days of yore, with a thing called a pen, and putting into the “office paper only” basket those paper sheets on which are written literally thousands of wonderful ideas for stories and books and poems and sermons that will never come to screen, and which now do not look nearly as insightful or necessary to share as they did at the time I wrote them down.

That’s where the 2014 column ended. I recall that I felt slightly sad and nostalgic about discarding all those writing ideas. Now I can only wonder why I hung onto them for so long.

Anyway, now that they’re gone, I’m looking forward to getting into synch with the universe.

John Robert McFarland

“It’s not too late unless you don’t start now.” Barbara Sher