“Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
On old long syne.” – “Old Long Syne” by James Watson, 1711

“But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.” – “Auld Lang Syne” Standard English Version

2020 was like waking up from a nightmare and realizing that the nightmare might have been a better alternative.  By the end of the first week of January, my school district was hit with a ransomware attack that locked down the digital network of the school district.  I remember the eerie feeling of going to work every day and not even turning on my computer.  I realized that I had never gone a day without using my computer at work.  For three weeks the computers were off, and students returned to doing their assignments in the way before computers infiltrated every aspect of life.  What was peculiar (and welcome) was students were learning much better without all the digital technology.

Then near the end of that month, while scrolling down Facebook I saw a shocking piece of breaking news that I did not think was real, but then I went to CNN’s website and there it was with the website ominously running a dark background:

NBA Legend Kobe Bryant Is Dead at 41.

“What happened?!” I thought.  And there it was, a helicopter crash in the middle of a foggy morning, and his daughter who was as old as my students had died with him too along with seven others.

I was devastated.  I had watched him play since I was in elementary school during the glory days of basketball.  His death rang in my head for the next several months, and I realized that Kobe was the only famous individual I knew of who practiced the virtue of excellence, which I define as pushing oneself to continually get better and outperform themselves.  And he did it with intense dedication over the years.  He was already incredibly talented from a young age, and he continued to soar to new heights up until his injury in 2013.  He had always inspired me to pursue excellence in my own endeavors.

Not only that, but his style of play was awe-inspiring and a joy to watch.  As I’ve watched basketball over the years, the game seems to have become mechanical.  But with him, it was more like watching a work of art in motion.  There was elegance in the way he played the game.  That continued to the very end. I remember watching his final game in 2016: when he crossed 30 points, I thought that was huge for a player who was playing his final game and was 37 years old finishing off a 20 year career.  But he didn’t stop there, he crossed 40 points.  Then he went to the bench a couple of times to take a breath, and I thought he was going to die on the court from a heart attack, literally to leave it all on the court.  Then he scored 20 more for a total of 60 points, a feat most players never achieve even in the prime of their careers.  He did that in his final game.

In his public memorial on February 24, his friend and agent Rob Pelinka shared something Kobe had written him on the inside cover of his book Wizenard, which said,

“May you always remember to enjoy the road especially when it’s a hard one.”

And that stuck with me.  I interpreted it as to not lose sight of all the good things that happen to us when we are on a journey, even a difficult one, but to enjoy the journey as a whole.  It had been an especially hard school year, and it was getting harder, but that statement made me stop for a moment and think about the journey.

Then there was a developing news story out of China about what was called at the time the “Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.”  The outbreak started to grow, and China locked down the entire province of Hubei in which Wuhan was located.  It was unprecedented; they fully locked down a province of more than 58 million people.  I started following the story actively.  I had coincidentally been teaching a unit on contagious diseases all throughout this time, and as the story grew, and the virus began to spread across the world, I never saw students more interested in learning about such things.  They were now easily conversing about epidemiology.

In mid-March, they closed the schools, and then I realized this was becoming extremely serious.  I had previously quipped that the schools would stay open if they thought they could improve their scores by as much as 1%.  Originally, my district anticipated a three-week closure.  That was cute.  Here we are halfway through the following school year, still closed.  Never did I think that schools would be locked down through at least the end of the 2020-2021 school year, but that is where things look like they are headed.

What I Read

If I was going to be stuck indoors, then I decided that the best thing I could do was to read.  I had actually sworn off reading in late 2019 (too long a story to share here; yes, me; you read that correctly), but the pandemic brought me back to reading.

I’ll share just a few of what I read that I recommend.

I began by reading and listening to the book A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis.  I think it was the gravest book I have ever read because it is a compilation of the reflections of a man on his grief over losing his wife, who also happened to be his Muse.  She was not only his wife, but shared his entire vision, heart, and mind. Also, his language is unbelievably poetic and clear.  It made me realize how marriage is a spiritual experience that shows us what it means to be in a relationship with an Other, and thus it opens our eyes toward what a true relationship with God means.  This is because marriage, of all relationships, is solely built on a free love and a free commitment.  It shows us what it is like to deal with reality and be transformed in the process.  Perhaps the thing I learned most from the book is how prone we are to creating images, even of the people we are with, and that being with a person breaks down all images we have and makes us present to reality.  I realized that most of us don’t value the reality of others as much as our images of them.  And that revelation alone has transformed my relationships with others this year.

Then I read the poem The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot.  The first time I heard of this poem was in a set of lines from its fourth part, which have haunted me ever since I heard them when I was about 14 years old.  Those lines read:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time”

(T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding V, The Four Quartets).

It was a deep observation about the nature of time and our existence within time.  Over the years I have interpreted these lines to mean that when we experience life (that is the exploration), that when we come back to our most familiar place, we will learn to see it differently because of how we’ll appreciate the meaning of having a family, a home, a place in a community, and even existing within a specific time period.

I found out that the entire poem is about the nature of time (and if you are reading it carefully, God’s providence).

Then I read quite a bit of the Church Fathers beginning with the Oration to Origen by St. Gregory the Wonderworker.  We remember St. Gregory for his miracles, not for his learning, but he was a deeply learned man.  In it he walks through how Origen, his instructor in the faith, taught him how to see the beauty of God in the world, in others, and how to live that beauty out in our own lives.  He also pointed out how the study of philosophy had caused him to develop what he eloquently called “rational wonder.”

Then following the mood of doom and gloom that 2020 has wrought upon us all, I read The Life of John Chrysostom by Palladius of Hellenopolis which was written within a few years of his death by his fellow bishop and friend who also shared in some of his suffering toward the end of his life.  It will give you a good look into the life of the greatest of all the preachers of the early Church, and how bad things do happen to the best of all people, and how we as Christians should respond to these things.  This book would also be good background for those reading The Letters to Olympia, which Chrysostom wrote in his exile.

I also read the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, which is mostly a diary of Perpetua as she awaited her martyrdom.  She was a 22-year-old convert to Christianity, who was nursing her first and only child.  Then the actual martyrdom was recorded by a probable eyewitness and is attached at the end.  I was deeply moved by the account.  It will shame any who call themselves men or women because of the bravery and courage and steadfastness that she and her companions showed in the face of certain death.  Words will fail me in adequately doing it justice.  I started writing a poem on these martyrs that suggested itself to me, but almost six months later, I am not done because I fear it will not be worthy of the memory of these martyrs.

Then I decided to read some literature, also doom and gloom, so I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  It was published in 1953, but it seemed to speak to exactly our time, even portraying it in sometimes stunning detail.  It is fairly lyrical in its style through most of the book, which makes it a pleasure to read.  But it was also incredibly profound in its observations about how a fast-paced, results-driven, and career-oriented life will destroy the humanity in us.  I consider it a prophecy.

Then I read a beautiful little book called The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  It is very short, less than 100 pages but profound nonetheless.  The Little Prince lives on a small asteroid and has traveled to earth making stops on seven other asteroids.  On each asteroid he meets one person who is stuck in some cycle of modern life whether it is pursuit of fame, or wealth, or the power hungry, or those stuck in a cycle of never-ending work.  Then he meets a pilot who has crashed in the Sahara.  And they begin to have a conversation, which ends up being about the meaning of life.  I don’t want to give away too much, but this must be a book all cultured people read, and indeed it is the third highest selling novel of all time, and has been translated into over 300 languages.

Then I read some of Plato’s dialogues, which never cease to be pleasing.  I read Gorgias and Symposium.  If you want to know about the nature of ethics and the nature of love (eros) (in debate with faulty views of the two), then these two books are worth your read.

I also participated in a book club (on Zoom) with three other people that spanned part of May and all of June where we got halfway through Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan Peterson.  Each session was easily 3 ½ hours long, and we could have kept going on and on.  That book is an odyssey in itself being applicable to every single part of life.  I only add the warning that you know what it is we believe as Christians before you read the book.  That book club was the highlight of my summer.

I have also been participating in another book club (also on Zoom) for the last few months that is reading the book Father Arseny 1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, and Spiritual Father.  All I can say about this book is that it is an incarnation of the beauty of Christ in the life of Father Arseny.  I have not quite read anything like it before, and the best I can tell you is to read it.  It will refresh your soul.

My Service

Then with regards to my service, I remember the first week of the lockdowns in mid-March, I got worried over those I formerly served in Sunday School (I had previously decided to take an indefinite hiatus from my service at the beginning of 2020 much like I did with my blog from June to October).  But I thought what were they going to do?  That brought me out of hiatus immediately, and my fellow servants and I decided to teach through Zoom.

I remember that I grasped how serious this pandemic was when I saw all my Sunday school students’ faces on a grid on Zoom, all at home.  If you told me that 9 months later (or exactly 283 days later as I write this) that we would still be in lockdown, I don’t know what I would have done.  Thank God we didn’t know that this was going to last this long then; that would have been demoralizing.

I remember the first discussion we had that first day on Zoom, and it made me very concerned.  Every one of the children echoed this sentiment:

“I know that if I pray to God, then God will keep us safe and nothing will happen to me and my family.”

“No, no, no,” I thought to myself.  We can’t let them fall into this trap that God will do every single thing we ask in prayer.  The Bible and the history of the Church clearly shows us otherwise.  So, the next week I taught them about the providence of God.

We began with the Book of Job and how bad things do happen to good people, and that we might never know why they happened to us regardless of how good we are.

Then sometime later, I believe we discussed the idea of wrestling with God (which is actually what the name Israel means), and we looked at the sections of the Book of Jeremiah called the Confessions of Jeremiah, which are five sections in his book in which Jeremiah, after recording God’s words, stops and gives his own reflection on these words.  It is very clearly a struggle.  God tells him to not even bother praying for Israel, and not only him, but even if Moses and Samuel, two of the greatest prophets, prayed, He would not hear them.  Jeremiah even uses irony in alluding to the Psalms (as a sort of challenge) showing the intense struggle.

In Jeremiah 12:1-2, Jeremiah says,

“Righteous art thou, O Lord,
when I complain to thee;
yet I would plead my case before thee.
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all who are treacherous thrive?

Thou plantest them, and they take root;
they grow and bring forth fruit;
thou art near in their mouth
and far from their heart” (RSV).

Now compare that to Psalm 1 which says that the righteous prosper and not the wicked, the righteous who meditate on the Law are the ones like trees bearing fruit, not the wicked.  You can clearly see the struggle of the prophet.

Then continuing with the theme of the providence of God, shortly before Holy Week, we discussed how even one of the prayers of our Lord Jesus was not answered because God’s plan for the freeing of humanity from sin and healing them from it required that our Lord Jesus share in our suffering and death.

Little did I know that when one of my Sunday school students at the beginning of the school year had asked me about if God had a plan for our lives, then how do we have free will would be answered in this detail over the course of this year.  At that time, I answered by giving an analogy of how I could have a plan for someone, and if they chose to follow it, then they made that choice freely.  So, while there is a plan for their lives, they still make the choice to follow that plan.  That was an 11-year-old asking that question.

If I may give an image to describe the providence of God, it would be like a train.  The cars are the centuries and what happens in each car affects the car behind it.  Everyone has the ability to do whatever they want within the train, but the train as a whole is headed toward a destination.  We thus have free will, but everything occurs within the order of God, which is that Christ was crucified and has risen from the dead, and that time will end on the day God has appointed, and our response to the work of Christ will shape our lives in this age and in the age to come.

This year I saw 12-year-olds turn into mature Christians because they were faced with reality.  For too long have we babied our congregations.  It’s time to get them to be mature and not think of God as a cosmic friend, but as the Director of the universe.  I saw the transformation that resulted this year due to reflection upon these Biblical topics and because these 12-year-olds experienced the things the Bible speaks about.  They thus realized the wisdom of the Scriptures to teach us how to see and how to be.  I had some of the deepest conversations about prayer with these 12-year-olds.  I heard some of the deepest reflections about the providence of God from these 12-year-olds too.  I can’t recall many similar conversations with adults, but that is the power of the Scriptures as Psalm 19 says,

“The law of the Lord is faultless, turning souls;

The testimony of the Lord is reliable, making infants wise;

The statutes of the Lord are upright, making glad the heart;

The commandment of the Lord is radiant, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever and ever;

The judgments of the Lord are valid, justified altogether,

Things desired beyond gold and much precious stone

And sweeter beyond honey and honeycomb” (Psalm 19:8-11 LXX, NETS).

I Learned Who My Friends Are

I also learned who my friends are, or I should rather say I confirmed who I truly thought were my friends, and who just happen to be in the same place I am weekly, monthly, or yearly.

I made more friends than in previous years.  Thank God that we had Zoom during this pandemic.  Think if this happened 15 years ago.  Sure, I have gotten Zoom fatigue by the sheer fact of having to be on it all day long as a teacher, and I probably will significantly limit my time in front of a screen as soon as they declare the pandemic over, but l have seen the faces of those who are my friends on Zoom.  I have seen their smiles, and not just half a face covered by a mask.  I have seen their responses, and not just guessed at how they take what I said.  And we preserved sanity because of this.

Was 2020 a good year or a bad year?

Every single year is a mixture of good and bad in varying proportions.  No matter what anyone says, this year was disproportionately bad.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to use 2020 as a curse word in such ways “Ugh, 2020,” or “You remind me of 2020.”  Let it not be named on your lips!  But the good that has come from this year is unlike the good in other years in that it is deeper and more meaningful and has caused people to come face to face with themselves instead of living in their self-deception.

Some people have realized how poor they are (and I’m not talking financially).  They have discovered that they have nothing to contribute because of how they have never invested in themselves.  There was no depth to who they were before the pandemic; no personal depth, no personality, no spirituality, no vision.  They were only a gear in the large machine called modern civilization.  This year provided an opportunity for people to know themselves and to invest in themselves.

Others realized who matter most to them in their lives in spite of the noise of the place and time we happen to inhabit.  They reached out across the distance to bring those people they valued into their lives.  They built friendships and these friendships developed, which would have been improbable in any other year.

So, take the good of this year with you and cultivate it over the rest of your lives because you probably won’t get another opportunity to learn the lessons this year provided.  Keep those friendships you made, and develop them because they were there for you in the darkness, so how much more will they be there when it light?  Don’t go back to business as usual.  Keep your vision fixed on the grace that is when the world runs smoothly because we have all learned how that smoothness hangs by a very thin thread.  And don’t waste any more time in your life.

Also, don’t forget the bad that happened this year.  Take it with you and let yourself grow based on what you’ve experienced and what you’ve learned from it.  Otherwise, you’ll end up being the same exact person you were before the pandemic, and if you did not let this pandemic transform you and make you wiser, then what will?  Don’t be a fool.

So, what of 2021?  It may sound strange, but I’ll tell you don’t set expectations, don’t make any resolutions, don’t even make a list of goals.  Rather, just be.  Be a person.  That means invest in yourself.  Cultivate your friendships.  Read the books that form us, that will enrich us, that can shape our vision, and that will guide our lives.  Just be a person, and you’ll do well.

Practice stillness.  I know I had almost forgotten it, but it took months of the pandemic to bring me back to this practice.

Practice listening to others and just listening.

The celebration of the New Year is just a day that we shift our attention to realizing the fact that time marches on.  So keep marching on and don’t stop, center yourself on Christ, and don’t fake it.  And all shall be well.

If you found benefit from this blog entry, click here to like my Facebook page here OR sign up to my email list to receive my latest blog entries every week in your inboxes, and you will also receive my free eBook The Way of Christ.  Click here to sign up.