THE ECLECTIC CLERIC - “Janus is a two-faced God.”

Statue of Janus at the Vatican

Say what you like, I am a natural born April Fool. It just seems so much more sensible to begin a new year in the beginning of spring, when life is resurgent and new opportunities in the air, than to stay up until midnight on one of the longest and darkest nights of the year in order to ring a bell, blow a horn, and drink a little champagne. The dead of winter is just that: Dead. A New Year = New Life = Spring.

But those old Roman calendar makers disagreed. And there is one advantage to starting the new year in the dead of winter. Winter is a season that looks both forward and backward -- ahead to the opportunities which await us in the coming year, but also back on the achievements and regrets of the previous, and what we might learn from them. This is why the Roman god Janus was always depicted with two faces -- one face looking forward, and the other retrospectively back to the past...not just in nostalgia either, but with an honest and critical appraisal of what has gone before.

In 2008 I went through so many changes in my life I hardly know where to begin. My cancer diagnosis, months in the Hospital and Rehab, giving up my apartment for two rooms in the assisted living center, not being able to walk, not being able to drive, and, of course, the death of my beloved dog Parker in October, after 13 years of near-constant companionship. These are just the more noticeable things; they do not exhaust the list by any means. Perhaps most significantly, here were also my inner struggle over the issues raised by applying for disability insurance, in effect acknowledging that I could no longer do this job I love without help, and creating the opportunity to get that help and still do as much of my job as I am able.

But the real miracle of 2008 has been the way that this community has rallied around me in my illness, and inspired me to do everything in my power to fight this disease, and to stay focused on the big dreams we have shared together about the future of First Parish and our role within the larger Portland community. So even as we gaze retrospectively upon our past, let us also look with vision and imagination toward the future, as we work together to become both the kinds of people, and the “community of memory and hope” that our heritage and our destiny summon us to be.