The New Year and Antidotes to Despair
A reflection on the holidays
Hello old friends and new subscribers! This is the inaugural post for the New Year!
One of my New Year’s resolutions is to post regularly (and use the main email feature of Substack) to have the kind of epistolary relationship with my readers that I’d always wanted.
:O
There will be posts on Wednesdays and Fridays around 7pm Eastern!
Religion and the antidotes to despair
This past year, Hanukkah started on December 25, and so with the coinciding of Christmas and Hanukkah, I felt inspired to pursue some spiritual exploration.
This involved my usual habits around the Christmas and New Year, and in addition I lit my menorah, went to an episcopal church on Christmas Eve, and then went to a Russian Orthodox Church on the night before Russian Christmas.
A few people asked why the service started so late (the service lasted from 10pm until around 1:30am, followed by food and drinks until 4:00am).
My answer was that, like some very serious birthday parties, it rings off before midnight the night before!
Something I am bringing into the New Year is the idea that just as religion (and spirituality in general) can create spiritual obligations and griefs from not meeting those obligations — they can also provide some of the antidotes to those griefs.
Perhaps a system that creates obligations can also create relief and release.
I think about this because I often think about “implicit” religions that people follow — but religions can be very complex, and people can often follow a subset of a religion for a long time (implicitly or explicitly), and still miss some parts. And those missing parts can be important! They could be part of an important process with some of the other parts.
This is not meant to be a very serious post about religions, but I find it nice to start the new year with an eye open towards areas of peace and comfort that may have felt closed off before.
I find the literal imagery and language used to be helpful as a trailhead. A menorah symbolizes light in the darkness. Without it, there would be all darkness, overwhelming despair! No good! But all darkness, with a few little specks of light, creates a much different picture!
In the Russian sermon, the priest spoke about the cold feeling of being disliked or rejected by your dearest friends. But he mentioned that since we are all here, nearby, together in this physical church, in community, this means that we are not also at the same time in a very dark forest far away — and so the feelings of being in a dark forest far away are not what is happening but are illusory. Meanwhile, here, you can turn to Jesus Christ whenever you want to and speak to him as a friend. “What is remarkable about Jesus is that he lived as a man for 30 years. As a man, just like you.”
There will be more posts about the antidotes to despair in the future. I am also collecting categories for little riches I can take inventory of from 2024:
presents given
presents received
favorite songs
places traveled
new friends hung out with
New food attempted to cook
New food eaten
Animals petted
<3
<3 Love these <3
presents given
presents received
favorite songs
places traveled
new friends hung out with
New food attempted to cook
New food eaten
Animals petted