This New Day

Today was supposed to be rainy and dreary. But it wasn’t. The rain came through more quickly and thoroughly washed away the last vestiges of 2020. And this morning the sun broke through the clouds. The air felt like spring. It was a new day in a new year.

Of course, this does not mean anything in the grand scheme of the world. A beautiful January 1 in one town does not mean that the tide has turned any more than the flipping of the calendar magically changes our circumstances. The things that made last year so difficult stubbornly still exist: the pandemic and the maddening number of people who don’t take it seriously, the leaders tilting at razor-bladed windmills for political gain, the sickness, the dying, the heartbreak.

The lingering of the past year made me stop in my tracks this morning. It literally stopped me. I took advantage of the beautiful morning and went on a new year’s run. The route I usually run takes me near 2nd Avenue where a suicide bomber set off a massive explosion on Christmas Day. Several streets downtown are still closed which meant that I had to stop and figure out a different way to find my way home. Despite the cleansing rain and the bright new day, the echoes of a harsh year still resonated.

I was running up against something that had silenced me for the better part of December. Advent is usually a season that animates me. The God-with-us story of incarnation means so much to my faith. But the year had become a floodwater that drowned most of that out until all that was left was a raw apocalyptic hope for something better.

I couldn’t write. I couldn’t really summon the spirit of hope that had buoyed me in previous years. And now two miles into the new year, I was finding my feet splashing through the same puddles that wanted to drown me. Could this year truly be any different? Sure the calendar now says 2021, but it also is just another Friday.

I know this all sounds a wee bit overdramatic and full of angst for a morning run. But I think we all can afford ourselves some time for existential dread at this point. So this is what happened next. I reminded myself that today was supposed to be rainy and dreary, but it wasn’t. And that is enough for today. Yeah, the calendar turning does not magically make everything better, but it gives our little human brains the opportunity to stake out a fresh start.

A beautiful day when there wasn’t supposed to be one is enough. I found my way home and today has not been perfect but it has been good. That is enough. For this new day in this new year, it is enough to hope.