As 2022 Ends and 2023 Starts, Embrace Regret.

“Regret is a tough but fair teacher. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life.” --Brené Brown, author, "Rising Strong"

“Take a mulligan.” Ever heard that curious turn of phrase?

To explain: in golf to “take a mulligan” is wonderful and graceful, and also completely unofficial and illegal, but still adopted by some weekend hackers like me. A duffer who can’t consistently hit that little white ball straight and far or drop it in the hole dependably.

Thus, the mulligan…so once every golf round, taking a mulligan allows you to take back one shot, one errant drive, one regretful swing and then do it all over again. That’s right. Make a mistake but the golf gods grant you one more try, and so you do just that. Try again.

Take a mulligan.

You hit into the woods, that ball never to be found again, except maybe by Bambi. You swing at your ball buried in the sand trap, miss completely, sand and swears flying up into the air. You try to magically curve your golf ball around a tree. The ball hits the tree, ricochets, and whizzes by your head with inches to spare. 

AAAHHHHH! I can’t believe I just did that!!!! &*(^%$#@!!!!!!!

But then you get to take a mulligan. Take a do over. Start from scratch and not look back. I might regret my shot, sure, but then I can swing again. In forty-seven years of golf, I’ve shot thousands of regretful shots. Times I felt awful as soon as I swung the club and knew things would not turn out as I planned or hoped for.

Which, when you think about it, is also pretty much par for the course in our human lives too. And yes, I meant to use that pun.

We swing and sometimes we hit it beautifully but sometimes we swing, and we miss it, and we whiff. We plan on a brilliant outcome and instead life screws up, and sometimes really, really badly, the best laid plans going off into the woods. We think we have a simple shot, an easy task, but then we choke. Get nervous. Hesitate. Change our minds. Things just fail.

We have regrets. The times we wish we could do it all over. Take a life mulligan.

At each years’ end I look back at how I lived in the past 365 days. Along with the good, I also remember how I made mistakes, like in 2022. I recall the people who I hurt, by omission or commission, not meaning to. But there it is. A word spoken in anger. A commitment fallen short. An important day forgotten. I remember when I really botched it up at work. Said I would do something and then I did not. I recall the times I did not treat my body well or just gave myself a brutal time, would not let up in self-criticism. I think of days when I should have loved more boldly, yet I held back. There are phone calls I did not make. The risks I did not take.

In other words, life.

Sound familiar? It should. Because we all swing, and we all miss sometimes and that is just the way this life works out. None of us are perfect. None of us get to play God even though we might want to. No one escapes failures or knows a life devoid of regret.  To be alive is to both soar and to stumble, to sin and to succeed. It’s what makes life both an adventure and a struggle and everything in between.

So, here is my earnest prayer for all of us as we cross the bridge from 2022 into 2023.  When you look back on the year about to conclude and remember the things you wish you’d done differently and the regrets you are now wrestling with, do this.

Give yourself a mulligan. Give yourself some graceful love.  Accept your humanity. Embrace this life and embrace yourself as fully human, someone who swings and hits and someone who swings and misses.

The gift of faith is that God consistently gives us mulligans. Again and again and again. God made our humanity and never expects us to be divine somehow. Divinity is God’s job, and certainly not ours’.  Nope. We are designed to be both beautiful and flawed and all at the same time. And when we know this about ourselves, it makes it easier to accept and forgive others too. Give them a mulligan.

I, for one, cannot wait to welcome in a brand-new year. 2022 was good, at times even great and yes, at other times it was kind of hard, even a slog. That’s life.

In the year ahead may we all swing away and all with our best efforts and intentions. And when we make a mistake (and we will!), just take a mulligan. God is ready to give us one too.

Now where did that golf ball go?! 

Happy 2023. 

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

God Grant Us All A Silent Night. A Holy Night.

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.” --“Silent Night”, hymn, by Franz Gruber, 1818

There’s a silent night. Then there is a really, really silent night.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, the most silent and the quietest place on earth is found in “a leafy suburb of Minneapolis” at a place called Orfield Laboratories. Within a non-descript concrete building is a room called an anechoic chamber. As the article notes, “A person in [such a chamber] will hear nothing.” Nothing save for the sounds of one’s own body: heart beating, lungs breathing, stomach growling etc.

I’m someone who always, by years’ end, is so, so ready for a truly silent night on the 24^th of the twelfth month and beyond. I long for some peace and quiet. I’m tempted to hop on a plane and pay that lab a visit. (But not today. It’s -4 degrees in the Twin Cities and with gusty winds it feels like -31 below.  Silent night. COLD NIGHT!)

I can postpone that trip to the quietest place on earth until summer, but not my need for some December quiet. All of us as humans, we all need and desire some sssshhhhhhh time. For silence. For peace.  For rescue, from the cacophony of sounds in modern life, like annoying leaf blowers or seat belt dingers or cell phones brrringing and email notifications tinging. 

Yup—God, please help me make these all go away but also….

We need more silent nights and days from the perpetual buzz and the noise of our always on culture too. You know, from the manic media, from the loud and never-ending sounds of politicians pontificating, and man baby billionaires tweeting and Christmas commercials continuing and sports stars sounding off and blah, blah, blah, blah.  

It’s like none of us know how to just chill out anymore from this world’s chatter. I know I find it so hard not to immediately turn on the news when I get in the car or surf the web right when I get home or click through links on my phone when I have to find something to do for the three minutes I must endure while I wait in line at the grocery store.

Not that anyone else is like that, right?

It’s like so many of us are now addicted to noise. To the hype, and hyperness and hypersonic pace of our lives. It’s like we’ve forgotten how to turn it all off, turn it down, turn away from it, and then turn towards stillness. To just being. Listening. To the sounds of nature: snow falling, an eagle’s wings flapping, or the winds blowing through bare winter trees. Our devices are like crack and our world is always, ALWAYS ready to feed our habit, and our addiction to anything but silence.

Please give me instead, sweet silence. Just one silent night.

So quiet we can hear the beating heart of the one we love, sleeping right next to us. So quiet we can hear the prayerful longings of our hearts at years’ end, longings for peace on earth and goodwill to all people. An end to war. To pray—to listen to and to talk to God? It takes quiet. So quiet we can hear the cooing of an infant nestled in its mother’s lap, the gentle little snores of a child asleep on the couch, the crackle, and snaps of dry wood in the fire as it blazes away. So quiet we can actually step back from life and be alive to all that is good and to all that is right and to all that is true and to all that really matters in this life. 

Love, hope, joy, peace.

It takes some quiet for us to remember these things. The really important things. The things in life that last. That can’t be bought in a noisy store or ordered from Amazon.  The silence teaches us that life is a mystery and so precious but only if we are attentive to it can we appreciate that. The silence gives us the space we need to think, really think. The silence invites us into the wonder of life. What a miracle it finally and truly is—just to be alive.

God grant us all a silent night, and not just in the next few days but in the new year as well.  Silent nights. Holy nights. Quiet nights.  When all is calm, and when all is bright.

Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………..

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

      

  

December Stress and Blues? Give Yourself Some Grace

"Haul out the holly, Put up the tree before my spirit falls again, Fill up the stocking, I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now. For we need a little Christmas, right this very minute. YES, WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" --from the musical “Mame,”1966, by Jerry Herman

Christmas is coming fast and coming soon and there is nothing we can do about it. Hannukah as well, along with the other holidays and holy days and traditions and rituals that fall at this time of year.  Ten days and counting as of today.  So, here’s a little prayer for all of us as we move towards, and then through, the 25^th and beyond, right into 2023.

Give yourself a break. Give your neighbor a break. Give your kids and your spouse or significant other and your aging parents a break. Give them some slack and grace. Yes, even for your pain in the butt Uncle Pete, who can always be counted on to say something incredibly inappropriate at the dinner table in between sips of spiked eggnog.

I say give all of us a break because of what is usually not said but is very often experienced by lots of people this time of year. You. Me. Everyone at some point in their life. We get the holiday blues. Holy day downheartedness. Christmas crankiness. New Year’s numbness. Basically, we experience a psychic and spiritual disconnect from all the bright lights and frantic shopping and major partying that marks the twelfth month. 

The culture yells, “WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS NOW!” But for many, all they really want is a tinsel timeout. And to be given a break.  

The opposite is true as well. In good times, our spirits can connect completely with the expectations of holiday cheer. I remember a December when I was newly in love, so smitten with my girlfriend. I was walking on air and absolutely LOVING Christmas. Having a new baby or a toddler or kids around come the holidays is often great fun. The years my young nieces rushed down the stairs on Christmas morning to look at the tree and gifts and wake up Uncle John who was fast asleep on the couch. That was priceless. Such precious memories.

Good? Bad? Meh?

It is hard to predict just how we will feel come December. Depends on where things are at in our lives, I suppose. What the last year was like. Who we lost from our lives. New family we might have inherited. A job secured or a job lost. Health stuff. But whatever we are feeling right now—melancholy or merriment, happiness or harassed—one thing is for sure. December always magnifies and sharpens wherever we find ourselves emotionally.

ALWAYS.

So, if you are missing someone who died and won’t be around the holiday table, this year might be very tough. I will be thinking of my aunt and uncle come the 25^th. For almost twenty years they welcomed me into their Florida home for a week of blessed R&R right after Christmas. Both of them are now gone, so I will be staying up north in 2022. And boy do I feel the absence of those loved ones.

When we lose someone or a relationship or our kids can’t home or we are ill, the holiday season can be a struggle. And that is ok. There is no rule book that says we are required to be filled with Christmas cheer and must fa-la-la-la-la all the way to January 2^nd. Do what you need to do to get through. Have a good cry. Tell stories about the people who are absent. Watch a cheesy Christmas movie—there are only about 10,000 of them streaming right now! Pray and fall back into your religious tradition for hope and comfort.  Drink a lot of eggnog. Whatever it takes.

Just take good care of yourself.

If you are on the other side of the Christmas blues and joyfully sailing through this season, then watch out for those who might need a little more TLC. Then take their hand and take them into your heart and love them and walk with them. Invite them to dinner. Give them a surprise gift. Listen to them and really pay attention. They will be so grateful. There is a lot of Godly grace to be found in the holidays if only we look for it and if only we offer it to others.

Christmas is coming, of that, I am sure. May the power that holds together all of the universe and holds together all of our human dreams and struggles…may that God bless you every day in the season ahead. And remember….

Give yourself a break. Others too. Even Uncle Pete.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.