Nov. 11, 2020: AND NEXT... HOLIDAYS!

This is my dad’s only brother, who died when I was fourteen, on the night of Thanksgiving. He’d just earned his PhD.

I can hardly believe it’s been just a week since I wrote this column. We now know the results of the 2020 election, and we stand on the precipice of a brighter future. I feel certain that how we interpret this moment says much about our outlook: are we basically pessimistic, superstitious, hopeful, fearful, anxious, cynical, or upbeat?

None of those attitudes would be unwarranted, given the facts! Still, it turns out that the way we interpret the facts has everything to do with how we engage the world, how we live, and how we will leave it.

There are things we can do about how we look at what is happening. That has perhaps never been more clear than it is in our public life right now. Are we decent people who can find a way forward, or are we threatened by forces from without and within against whom we must secure our borders and hoard our resources? And on and on.

It is often said in jest that UUs believe in at most one God.

But even UUs who are agnostic or atheist often consider themselves Humanists. They believe then in the innate goodness and worthiness of humans. We believe that all are worthy of love and none are beyond redemption. True, some have behaved so despicably and done such widespread damage that it is beyond our ability to grant them forgiveness. The best we can do is to shift our energies toward repairing the damage.

It seems almost perfectly plotted that the holiday season is upon us. Now, along with the ever-worsening pandemic, we have to make some form of contact with our families of origin and our loved and/or tolerated relations. This Sunday, along with some help from a few other GNUUC members, we shall look at how we do that. How do we confront the stories of holidays past and make sense of them, whether joyful, painful, or a mix of both, to give us grounding and wisdom as we approach another season?

I found that every year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, some tragedy would occur: illness, accident, injury, loss. It wasn’t until after I tried to make this time “happy” by getting married on December 18th (the marriage didn’t last) that I learned about anniversary grief. My mother died on December 10th, 1960 and there was a pall over our family… nothing supernatural, just unresolved trauma… that haunted us.

Thanksgivings and the holidays have continued to be unsettled for me, but my understanding and expectations of them and the tools I have to get through them have helped me, and I hope they help you as well.

See you Sunday.

With Love,

Cynthia