Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

A Fresh Start

 

Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern
September 24, 2006
Palo Alto, CA

This past Friday night, as they do every year at Rosh Hashanah services, Jews everywhere repeated these words:

On Rosh Hashanah it is written
on Yom Kippur it is sealed
Who shall live and who shall die
Who shall see ripe age and who shall not
Who shall be secure and who shall be driven
Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled … ¹

The words toll like funeral bells. As a child I would look around the packed sanctuary as we chanted them, and wonder, “Who shall live and who shall die?” Which of the people now repeating these words will not see another Rosh Hashanah? The fatalism of the words was compelling and terrifying. The great Book of Life held all our fates, and what was written in it, only time would tell.

That we had control over what was written there was obviously not the case. Otherwise wouldn’t some people, those with strong enough wills, clean enough hearts, live forever? Sooner or later, no matter how good a life we lived, it would be our last Rosh Hashanah. Even mine, I used to think with a thrill that only a very young person can feel about mortality.

And yet we do have some control over what will be written in the Book of Life. Judaism is not generally a fatalistic religion, and Unitarian Universalism is even less so. That dark passage is useful as a spur, a reminder that life is precious and we should live fully and mindfully. But it also goes beyond life and death:

Who shall be secure and who shall be driven?
Who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled?

And it goes beyond fate, because we have a hand in the writing of the Book of Life. What do we want to write there for ourselves? Do we want to be inscribed for a good year, as Jews wish each other at this time of year, “L’shanah tovah tikatevu”? A great deal about the future is beyond our control. But some of it is not. At the New Year, whether in January, September, or whenever we mark a time of transition, we make resolutions about the part that we can control. And so another Rosh Hashanah tradition is to dip apples in honey and say to each other, “To a sweet year,” before we bite into the delicious crunch of fall’s harvest.

The past is written in indelible ink, and it shapes the future, but it does not determine it. At the reflective time of a New Year, we pause to ask, What do we want to make of our lives next? and to remind ourselves that it is not only fate that holds the pen, but we do too. This is the chance for a fresh start. What of your past do you want to carry forward and what do you want to leave behind?

“‘Forget about what you are escaping from,’” Kavalier tells himself in today’s reading, quoting his mentor. “‘Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.’” ² To begin a new life he has to face forward into the future, which in his case is almost completely unknowable. His past is terrifying and staying in his village will likely lead only to death. The future is filled with almost as much anxiety, as he goes through dangerous territory to begin a new life across the ocean, in a country he has never seen before. But it is the direction of life, if he will bravely turn to the unknown.

Even when the circumstances are not so dramatic as an impending Holocaust, each of us faces an unknown future many times in our lives. The woman at the unexpected end of what was once a happy marriage … the man laid off after ten years of hard work and hopeful planning … each of us who wants to make a fresh start in some way, in some aspect of our lives … what will the future bring?

It’s all very well to say we need a fresh start, but the tricky part is that we can’t just erase the board and begin again. We can buy a new planner if we want to get organized, join a gym if we want to get in shape, but the biggest piece of equipment is ourselves, and that means our past. And our past can hold us back from making a new beginning. F. Scott Fitzgerald was pessimistic about our chance of breaking free, as he wrote in his famous closing words of The Great Gatsby, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” A. A. Milne took a lighter look at the problem when Pooh and Piglet went hunting a Woozle. It began when Piglet came upon Pooh when he was tracking a set of paw-marks along the ground.

Piglet, after watching him for a minute or two, ran after him. Winnie-the-Pooh had come to a sudden stop, and was bending over the tracks in a puzzled sort of way.

“What's the matter? ” asked Piglet.

“It’s a very funny thing, ” said Bear, “but there seem to be two animals now. This-whatever-it-was–has been joined by another–whatever-it-is — and the two of them are now proceeding in company. Would you mind coming with me, Piglet, in case they turn out to be Hostile Animals? ”

… There was a small spinney of larch trees just here, and it seemed as if the two Woozles, if that is what they were, had been going round this spinney; so round this spinney went Pooh and Piglet after them … Suddenly Winnie-the-Pooh stopped, and pointed excitedly in front of him. “Look! ”

“What?” said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn’t been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an exercising sort of way.

“The tracks!” said Pooh. “A third animal has joined the other two!” “Pooh!” cried Piglet “Do you think it is another Woozle?”

“No,” said Pooh, “because it makes different marks. It is either Two Woozles and one, as it might be, Wizzle, or Two, as it might be, Wizzles and one, if so it is, Woozle. Let us continue to follow them.”

So they went on, feeling just a little anxious now, in case the three animals in front of them were of Hostile Intent. ³

And so it goes. It isn’t until Christopher Robin comes down from the tree from where he has been watching them go around and around the spinney that the mystery is revealed.

Perhaps you can recall times when you discovered that despite making what you’d hoped would be a fresh start, you were going in circles, following the same path you’d tried to leave behind, and walking in your own tracks. Maybe you know someone who has retired but still can’t relax. Maybe a friend of yours has tried to kick a destructive habit but keeps spinning in the same rut. Maybe you have found yourself in a new relationship suddenly hearing, and saying, the words that came up so often in the old one. Maybe you’ve tried to turn and walk in the exact opposite direction, and found yourself coming right around the circle again.

I just read a mystery novel by Robert Barnard in which a young woman is writing a tell-all book about her mother, a famous actress whose talent for parenting was as weak as her gift for the stage was impressive. “I’ve grown away from her. She’s irrelevant to me,” says the daughter, as she buries herself in research into her mother’s sordid past. ⁴

The past comes with us because it’s part of us. So how can we make a fresh start?

Investment advisor Kim Snider made a new beginning for herself after a series of bad mistakes. She writes,

I … had to solve the problem for myself: “How do I make sure I never find myself in this position again?”

The position I am referring to is one of having gone from millionaire to flat broke in the space of about two years …

Two years after making more money than most people had a right to expect they would make in a lifetime I was dead broke. I had to admit to god and the world that I had screwed up the opportunity of a lifetime. That is a pretty bitter pill to swallow when you look yourself in the mirror each morning. I had to sell everything. I sold my beautiful, swanky condo. My cars were re-possessed. I had nothing.

The worst was when I had to go to my own Mother and ask for a loan because I couldn’t pay the mortgage. I couldn’t even afford to buy dog food for my dogs. That was pretty much a low point in my life.

She had gotten into trouble by handing over her finances to someone else to manage, and her turning point was the realization that her financial woes were not just a matter of bad luck. If she was to have a better future, she needed to take responsibility for her own decisions, to pay closer attention to what was happening in her life — in short, to change what she was doing. Here’s what she says to others now:

[M]y question to you is how is what you are doing working for you? What is holding you back … ? Look beyond the obvious. Is there some deeper attitude or belief that keeps you from doing what you need to do? ⁵

She aimed to be whole: to acknowledge who she was and what about her was holding her back from what she wanted to become. She neither denied the past nor fatalistically believed that she was stuck there. She wrote herself into the Book of Life, not by erasing or tearing out past pages of her life, but by taking the ink of herself and writing with it what she wanted her future to be.

Joseph Kavalier also needed to make a change in his own way of thinking and being if he was to begin again and have a chance at life. I found a nice echo of his mentor’s words in, of all places, a fitness magazine, which gave this New Year’s advice that is wise for all kinds of new starts: “Now is the time to revel in memories and write a new future, to remember where you've been and dream up an entirely new direction. Throw out the map, start fresh, and design the new year you truly want. That's real cause for celebration.” ⁶

The map, as we know, isn’t something we just carry around in our glove compartment: it’s written into the neurons of our brains, the pathways of our hearts, the habits of our hands. How do we free ourselves from it and begin again when it is so much a part of us?

The key lies in acknowledging the past even as we leave it behind. Not “erase your memories,” but “revel in memories … remember where you’ve been.” Our past is our guide. To truly leave it behind we need to remember it, lest we find ourselves walking around in circles and not even realizing it.

Cultivating detachment helps. Letting go of the past is letting go of a piece of ourselves. Just as challenging, it is acknowledging what our selves are really like. Since we don’t always like what we see there, it helps if we can say to ourselves, “I don’t have to carry everything I have ever been. I can set some of it down, say that yes, it is mine but I don’t want it anymore.”

Humor helps: the ability to laugh at our situation and particularly at ourselves — to notice when we are more like Pooh and Piglet than like the bold adventurer into the future, and with compassion for ourselves, straighten our path so we can move forward.

And ritual helps us to say a formal goodbye to what we want to leave behind and to remind ourselves of who we are and what we intend for our fresh start. Light a candle … write in a journal … repeat your intentions each morning. Take a bite of an apple dipped in honey, to make a wish for sweetness and a reminder of how sweet the future can be. Over the centuries of High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the time of the Book of Life, Judaism has developed other rituals of moving from past to future with joyous intention. Next week Darcey will lead us all in a special New Year’s Family Chapel that meets on the lawn at 10:30. We will let go of some of the habits of our lives, the unhealthful relationships, the parts of ourselves that we want to see recede into the past. Bring them with you, and together we will make a fresh start.

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