Sweetness Follows - January 12

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 119:1-24; PM Psalm 12, 13, 14; Gen. 4:1-16; Heb. 2:11-18; John 1:(29-34)35-42

Today’s Reflection

If you’ve never yet read anything by Sarah Condon, one of the hosts of the Mockingbird podcast and a regular contributor the Mockingbird blog and magazine, I highly recommend her writing. She’s an Episcopal priest out in the Diocese of Texas, presently serving as the campus missioner to Rice University. She once came to give a talk on personal spiritual practices, or rule of life, to my curate cohort at Camp Allen, and I found that her approach to connecting with God in prayer really resonated with me.

So, the other day, when a friend and colleague sent me a link to her most recent article, “A Light Year,” I knew I wanted to read on. Written as we transition from 2021 into 2022, Condon in this essay is making the point that just as much as we celebrate all of the hope and potential for good things ahead in the new year, just as much we need to be sure to honor everything that we went through in 2021 and how that has contributed to who each of us is as we look toward the year to come:

I do wonder if anyone is still making a New Year’s Resolution. Like an actual one, about weight, or money, or reading the Bible more. Doesn’t it feel like just living is enough right now? Between the news cycle and how everyone you know has Covid, isn’t it incredible that you are still here? You have made it through so much. You, the old you, the you who made it through 2021. Why would we ever need a newer version of the person who bravely faced so much pain? I rather like the 2021 you. And me. And I know God is in love with the old us. Absolutely head over heels. So here’s to that 2021 person.

Condon goes on to acknowledge a number of hard things and life transitions a person may have gone through in 2021, addressing what “you” did in the second person in a way that, if you happen to identify with one of the life events in the list, makes you feel like maybe she has been a fly on the wall in your life.

You survived the Christmas of 2021. … You got married this year… You got divorced this year. … You have run a church in the second year of a global pandemic…. You got a new job… You got diagnosed with cancer right before Easter. … Your parents both died in a car accident at the end of 2020. … Your [loved one] died of COVID.

Those who are familiar with Condon and her life story from her podcast and writing will recognize that at least one of items in this litany is something she personally experienced: the unexpected loss of her parents in a car accident a year ago. She has talked very openly about this loss as she has grieved for them and remembered them over this past year. Losing her parents, with whom she was especially close, made 2021 an even more challenging year, amidst all else. And maybe you can identify with some of other hard things in Condon’s litany—I know at least a couple have special resonance for me.

As I re-read Condon’s reflections on the losses and hardships we have suffered in 2021, I see a connection with today’s reading from Hebrews 2: For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.  –Hebrews 2: 16-18

In these verses, we are reminded of why God needed to be incarnate as Jesus. By living and dying as one of us, Jesus, too, was wounded. Jesus shared in our sufferings. And did this to help us—he didn’t come to help the angels (otherwise he would have become an angel). No, Jesus came to help us—that’s why, for a time, he lived and suffered as one of us. Because Jesus lived a human life in which he, too, was tested as we are, he is able to help us when we are being tested by trials and temptations of many kinds.

But, in the end, as we look back on all that we have gone through in 2021 and, indeed, over the course of our whole lives so far, we can hold onto hopefulness and a sense that, through it all, we are loved. A song that I listened to earlier this week also resonates with this theme that we will go through very hard things, but we also find, in the aftermath, that goodness remains. REM’s song “Sweetness Follows” (from Automatic for the People, 1992) begins with referencing a loss a lot like Condon’s:

Readying to bury your father and your mother
What did you think when you lost another?
I used to wonder, why did you bother?
Distanced from one, blind to the other

Musically and lyrically, it’s a rich song that I can’t do total justice to here (so you can listen to them play it at Glastonbury here). Much of what makes it a beautiful song is the way in which the bitter is blended with the sweet. We go through hard things. We suffer in ways in which, at the time, we are not sure how we will recover or things will ever better than they are in the difficult moment. But, in the end, we can look back on all that we have suffered and journeyed through with a sense of hope.

It's these little things, they can pull you under
Live your life filled with joy and thunder
Yeah, yeah we were altogether
Lost in our little lives
Oh, but sweetness follows
Oh, but sweetness follows

­Becky+

Questions for Self-Reflection

What did you go through in 2021 that seemed like it might “pull you under”? Looking back on it all, where do you see the “sweetness [that] follows”?

Daily Challenge

You can read Condon’s whole essay here. Or you can listen to the full REM song “Sweetness Follows” here.