Letting Go Into the New Year (revisted ten years later)
Rev. Diane Rollert
The Unitarian Church of Montreal, January 2, 2022
I love the picture Carol Muske-Dukes paints in her poem Crack the Whip: I can see a group of young ice skaters linking arms, whirling in frantic circles on the ice. They gain so much momentum that the two skaters on each end of the line can hold on no longer. The centrifugal pull snaps and they are blasted out into the unknown holding onto to nothing more than a stolen red mitten. What an image for the beginning of the New Year. The year cycles to its chronological end and we are spinning, spinning, with the turning of time, until we are flung off into something new, sailing off across the ice, the cold wind in our faces, the shock of change waking us up to new possibilities.
“Where does the old year go?” the singers sing on New Year’s Eve. “We know,” answers the poet. It is “the skater shot at last from orbit by the whip’s final crack.”
The poem brings back nearly forgotten memories from my own childhood. I remember skating as a kid across the frozen pond in a small park in Ohio. I remember everyone laughing, their cheeks red with the cold and the exertion of hanging on for dear life. Scarves flying, jackets open, mittens slipping. I was always a reluctant player of the game “Crack the Whip.” How could you not join in? And how could you not feel absolute terror at the prospect? I remember feeling scared, frozen, and exhilarated. It was always too fast.
Still, I’d play, just to hear the sound of my brother’s voice joyously yelling “Whoooooaaaa,” and then to hear him laughing as I went flying off in one direction and he in another. Often the game ended with a hard thump and hot tears steaming in the frosty air.
They say the world is divided between those who seek thrills and those who avoid them. But of course, life isn’t that simple. Even if you prefer not to take the thrill-rides, somehow the rides always find you. You’re sitting in your cozy armchair when it suddenly turns into one of those roller coaster cars with wheels. The great attendant in the sky brings the bar down across your lap, and you are captive. The car climbs up and up the long ascent and then drops you down into the longest, steepest decline you can imagine. You are flung into the abyss, screaming and hanging onto the safety bar with white knuckles, your face distorted with the effort and the fear. Life changes fast.
There is no old when the whip snaps: you’re new again, writes the poet.
The skater flung off, clasps an empty mitten and so much
depends on that stolen red!
So much depends on that stolen red. We let go into the new and unknown, but we still hold onto something. The poet says that something is “a Tyger, a thing-with-feathers, a single sad heart set against the polestar’s magnet.” A Tyger with a capital “T” and a “y” not an “I,” a direct reference to the classic poem by William Blake. “Tyger, tyger burning bright in the forests of the night…”
Blake’s Tyger represents a symbol of hope burning brightly in a world of night and shadows. I like to imagine that as we play this game of crack the whip that sends us skating into a new year, we hold onto something that isn’t really so much stolen as it is a spontaneous, magical and mysterious gift that has the potential to bring us hope and change our lives.
Snap! Goes the poem. The tether is severed. We’re solo – and still – where
the old New Years turn round each solstice in a snowy wood:
Reborn.
Every year our lives change. We let go of the old and we ring in the new. We find ourselves cut loose. We spin across the ice and, with any luck, we find ourselves cast into the stillness and the beauty of a snowy wood. We find ourselves reborn, holding onto that mysterious stolen red.
Now I will tell you that I first wrote the original version of this sermon back in December of 2005, when I was still a student minister. I shared a version of it here in Montreal ten years ago as I was leaving for a sabbatical ministry in the Philippines. Each time, the reflection has ended differently, and today is no exception.
There’s something powerful in going back to old words to see if they still ring true. In this case, for the most part they do. Some years I begin the new year with great anticipation for what the future may offer, and I’m willing to overcome my own fear, to play the game, to trust that everything will somehow be OK.
This year, I’m holding back, I’m not sure I want to play this game of crack the whip right now. But we don’t have any choice in the matter. We are being flung out into the unknown, wondering if we will ever again land softly in the beauty of a snowy wood. When will we be back together in person? When will this pandemic be over? Will we ever return to life as we knew it just two years ago?
We had so much hope only a few weeks ago, and here we are facing a nightly curfew once more, watching Covid case numbers rise to levels that boggle the mind. Even with some studies showing that Omicron may be mild in comparison to the Delta variant, our health care system is dangerously threatened, and hospital staff and essential workers are once again exhausted on the frontlines. Add in the changing climate and what may be ahead for this year, and it is hard to brush away all our worries with loving reassurances.
I want to be able to say to you that all will be well, and that we will return to normal this year. But I don’t think anyone can promise that at this moment in history. So I need to go back to the poet’s words.
At the end of the game of crack the whip, as we are launched into the unknown, we hold onto to that mysterious red mitten.
There is no old when the whip snaps: you’re new again.
The skater, flung off, clasps an empty mitten and so much
depends on that stolen red! Let’s say that this shed hand,
ripped from the dizzy helix, is a Tyger, a thing-with-feathers,
a single sad heart set against the polestar’s magnet: spinning
ladder-steps where each bright face repeats itself in double code.
We hold onto something that we cannot explain. We hold onto something that might enable us to make it through this new year, that might enable us to be reborn when we are feeling the most discouraged.
I think if I were to make a new year’s resolution today— something I never do — I would resolve to keep looking for that bright red mitten. Call it a resolution or a commitment,. I will keep looking for something that will enable me to be reborn or renewed or somehow fortified in this new year. I will find a way to do what I can and to accept that the future is always going to ask me to adapt and adjust in order to find meaning and purpose in a world I can never control.
Maybe this is the year I resolve to live by the serenity prayer secretly knit into a red mitten: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
For me, that red mitten is faith — not blind faith, not unquestioning faith, but an openness to faith that I will find the courage I need in the light of a sunset, in the kindness and caring that all of you are able to share with each other, in the reconnections amidst the disconnections of my life.
This is what I am asking of you today, on this second day of January 2022. Help me to find the things that will sustain us in a year of uncertainty. Stand by each other, even if you are angry, even if you are frustrated or losing hope. I don’t want to play this game alone even as we are being thrown back into isolation. I need to see your faces here on the screen. I need to know that you will commit to being here, building community however we can, even when the future may spin us off into places we would rather not go.
I often say that my job is spreading hope. But that, I think is not the right way to frame it. My job is finding hope by being in community with all of you.
This is the moment when we are reborn, when we are whole, when we find our integrity. Not in isolation, but through our capacity to be creative — together — in challenging times.
Fly across the ice with me, and when you find that red mitten, wave it in the air for all of us to see
Amen. Blessed Be. Namaste.
Crack the Whip
Carol Muske-Dukes
If you were the very last one on the line
rotating round the axis, you were a kid
winging it, hunkered down, scarf flying,
ice-blind. Your blades drawing sparks
on the rink’s surface as they spun out –
as you, spinning out, still held on tight
to the next up, the one fighting now
to let go of your hand, the centrifugal
pull you’d become – while on the other
side of the mirror, your twin fought
the same fight. Around the piano,
during wind and rain, the bright faces
sing out of tune, “Where Does the Old
Year Go?” But we know: the skater shot
at last from orbit by the whip’s final crack
keeps spiraling (the light-swept faces
one by one go dark) or rolling over and over
in snow, staring up at the distant glitter, still
hearing the circling cries. There is a crow,
always a crow. Where Does the Old Year Go?
And at the centerless center, what becomes of
the big shots revving the engines? Best & worst,
passionate intensity, face-to-face with the whirling
god who desires nothing but blue accelerating buzz…
There is no old when the whip snaps: you’re new again.
The skater, flung off, clasps an empty mitten and so much
depends on that stolen red! Let’s say that this shed hand,
ripped from the dizzy helix, is a Tyger, a thing-with-feathers,
a single sad heart set against the polestar’s magnet: spinning
ladder-steps where each bright face repeats itself in double code.
Snap! The tether is severed, we’re solo – and still – where
the old New Years turn round each solstice in a snowy wood:
reborn.