A sermon by Rebekah Ingram
The 10-second countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve reminds me of a scene from my favorite movie What About Bob? A young boy, Siggy, accidentally falls off a dock and into his first dive. After Siggy emerges from the water rather shocked, he mutters about how he almost drowned, how his whole life flashed before his eyes. Bob, who was somewhat responsible for Siggy’s accidental dive, responds: “Well, be glad you’re only ten.”
Counting down to the New Year is a little like this, at least for me. Memories and images from our lives flash before our eyes. All the previous New Year’s Eves are recalled. Major events of the year come to mind. Inevitably, hopes and expectations for the upcoming year begin to form. It’s a mini version of our lives flashing before our eyes only it is a mark of the beginning, not the end, of possibility, not despair. We might feel lonely even if we are surrounded by people, and we might feel that we are in good company even if we are alone. People yell Happy New Year! in the distance, from the apartment upstairs, the sidewalk below. The phone rings; cars and taxis honk their horns; a few fireworks crackle; memories come back to us with vivid intensity as we re-play the slideshow that is our lives and cross over the threshold of what was into what will be.
New Year’s Eve has an interesting way of inserting itself into the photo album of memories we quietly carry around in our minds, and oftentimes unknowingly add to. And this photo album comprised of New Year’s Eve images seems to reappear only on New Year’s…with such vividness, and such emotion.
First, a snapshot of me and my best friend, Jill, staying up late to watch “the ball drop.” We had heard about this ball and it was the buzz around Hemenway Elementary School. Are you allowed to stay up ‘til midnight to watch the ball drop? This is the first New Year’s Eve that I distinctly remember. Jill and I anxiously waited, watching the TV, to see this ball we had heard so much about to drop. I don’t think I have ever ushered in the New Year in such fits of laughter as I did that year. At first, we were so disappointed when this rather small, dull looking disco ball slowly, so slowly, inched down a pole and then lit up at midnight. It was comical, really. And so our disappointment turned to unstoppable laughter, and I vowed to never waste my time watching that again.
Then there is a snapshot of New Year’s Eve in France. I’m on vacation, having just finished my first semester at a University in Southern France. My parents and brother met me in Paris (where we had planned to celebrated Christmas and the New Year). We’re in Paris, yet we have no idea what to do, or where to go. My brother and I crowd into our parents’ hotel room for the countdown, my father sporting his brand new beret. I am hoping he doesn’t dare wear the beret in public.
And then last year, the snapshot is of me, Julia, and a few other friends enjoying a low-key New Year’s Eve. Julia has just had surgery. We can hear fireworks in the distance. In this snapshot, my heart is growing increasingly anxious and unsteady about the surgery I will hopefully have within the next few months. I can barely stay awake.
I have to confess that the idea of being alone on New Year’s Eve, going nowhere, doing essentially nothing, even the idea falling asleep before midnight seems perfectly practical to me. How is New Year’s Eve really different from any other night in the year? I am not one who feels particularly compelled to make New Year’s Eve special, profound, or different, and yet the fact that I have such vivid snapshots from every New Year’s eve tucked away somewhere deep in the storage of my memory, suggests that there is more to the new year than my rational mind is capable of grasping or willing to acknowledge. Maybe I keep my expectations low. Maybe I feign indifference when, really, I do care.
I care very much about how we mark the passage of time. Why? Because our lives are precious, and the New Year is a time to think about, as Mary Oliver asks, “what […] you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.” This is an important question that would be good to ask every morning when we rise. But few of us do. So during that countdown from one year to the next, the approaching threshold bombards us. It pushes us forward. It sets us reeling. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Having at least 10 seconds a year that are seeped with reflection, memories, contemplation, hoping, and dreaming, forgiving, and grieving is intense. And we need it. And we could probably benefit from it happening more than once a year.
The obvious paradox that we will all grapple with this evening is that no matter how clear and fresh the start of a new year can feel, we will never start with a completely clean slate. As with any new beginning, whether we are conscious of it or not, we can choose what we carry with us over the threshold, we can choose what we leave behind, and there are those things we must leave behind and cannot leave behind. For those things we leave behind, we celebrate. We grieve.
On April 5, 2006 I found myself in the pre-op room at Massachusetts General Hospital awaiting heart surgery. This was a major threshold for me. One that will no doubt be on my mind this evening just as each of you has major events, snapshots, and memories that mark 2006. As I found myself waiting, I was struck by how alone I was. I had one change of clothes in a small duffel bag tucked away below my gurney. In that bag, were books for class I naively thought would get read during my stay in the hospital and my iPod with particular songs I knew would help me stay calm. I was cold, shivering away on a hospital gurney in one of those horrible hospital jonnies. I listened closely to the nurses and hospital stuff buzzing through the pre-op room. “We can’t operate on Ingram right now! We’ve got an urgent pediatric case already on the table and ready to go.” Two hours went by. The solitude of those two hours was immense. I knew I had family and friends thinking of me, but I was alone, too shaky to even reach for the iPod.
I found myself unable to cope. I was overwhelmed, ready to ask for some sort of sedative, but I also didn’t want to be numb through the waiting because, what then would I learn from this threshold? There would be nothing for me to take with me into the next waiting room whenever and wherever that may be. And in that moment of being really close to asking for an anti-anxiety pill, I realized that I was not really alone. Physically, I had virtually nothing with me. No friends or family were by my side, and that was too much for me to bear in that moment. So I brought them to me. I brought everything to me in memory. I pulled conversations, people, and places close to me. They accompanied me through those two hours of waiting. I carried them with me when I was wheeled into the operating room. And they were with me when I woke up, calling me back to life, dissolving the oppressive solitude of surgery, of waiting, of not knowing what awaits on the other side of the threshold. And soon my parents were beside me in body, not just in thought. Re-membering, I literally re-attached the photo albums of my life to me. Michael White, a therapist specializing in narrative therapy, describes re-membering, “not as passive recollection, but an intentional engagement with the history of one’s life.”
And so on this New Year as we step over a threshold of time and enter the new year, find a safe place in the territory of your memory. Recall and engage the photo album that is your life. Notice what you carry. Decide what will accompany you over the threshold, and tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
