Mary Adamski: ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness’

VIEW FROM THE PEW

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said that in 1962, he was speaking about having faith as you move ahead through your life. The wisdom of the revered American civil rights leader being honored this week feels like the blueprint for the journey into the New Year.

It’s become a custom for people to try to chart their own course with New Year’s resolutions. We set guides and goals to measure ourselves, turning away from self-indulgence or procrastination or selfishness that have become a burden on body, mind and soul. We want to take control of our year ahead; so we make that list with high hopes and a convenient lapse of consciousness about some resolutions that fizzled last year.

Did those ancient astronomers, the counters of days and crafters of calendars, ever contemplate what effect their scientific measuring of time would have on people who came to take it as gospel that a year starts in the depth of winter. We just accept that “30 days has September” and all that finagled math aimed to measure Earth’s 365-day orbit around the sun. By the way, this is a leap year so it’s a 366-day calendar to make the math catch up with real time.

It’s been 442 years since Pope Gregory XIII unveiled this calendar which was first used in Catholic countries in Europe but eventually spread to use worldwide. Before that, much of the world used the calendar established by Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. By the way, Gregory got credit but the actual calendar calculation was done by an Italian scientist and philosopher Aloysius Lilius.

The calendar story as told on the History channel website is interesting and amusing. First of all, why did a pope get involved? That’s because the old calendar got out of sync with the traditional timing of Easter, which by Christian tradition has to follow the spring equinox. The Julian calendar is 26 seconds off from the solar year and through time, that’s what happened.

The new calendar also became a source of discord; the Protestant Reformation was percolating in Europe and Protestant countries rejected what they saw as a “papal plot.” Germany finally accepted it in 1700 but England held out until 1752. Before that, England had celebrated the New Year on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, celebrating when the Virgin Mary got the news about the child she bore. And that’s another interesting calendar story, connected to the timing of Christmas. I’ll leave it to you to count the months and figure it out for yourself.

Interestingly, the Star-Advertiser carried a calendar story on Jan. 7, the feast of the Epiphany. It told about Eastern Orthodox churches celebrating Christmas on Jan. 7 because they follow the old Julian calendar. That choice is a footnote on historical religious dissension, dating back to the Great Schism of 1054 when the two original branches of Christianity went their separate ways, not just on theological points. And that’s a different story a long way off the New Year track I started on here!

How’s the resolution thing working for you so far? Have you moved the pile of papers from the “to do” box into the proper folders in the filing cabinet? So you can be ready for tax time and actually find the insurance policy or warranty when you need it. Did you buy a scale and ditch the lingering Christmas chocolates and choose salad for lunch? Did you get a handle on your patience and make the phone call to someone who needs talk not text? Did you take charge and update your calendar with days to remember and pending commitments? Still being old-school and not gone paperless. mine is a paper calendar and no one could be happier than I am to see its clear open spaces ahead to fill. Alas, I already missed a Jan. 3 birthday because I dawdled at filling in any blanks.

A look back

But thinking of those discarded calories of holiday treats does make me look back in time to the days of working in a crowded, bustling newsroom. There was no limit to leftovers you could unload on those wired, voracious journalist grazers, no candy too aged or snack too stale. In my defense, I did bring occasional fresh-baked cookies, no guilt.

I confess I never even considered making a resolutions list. If I ever was inclined to set myself up to disappoint myself, I got over it years ago. Call me unmotivated, but I just could not get into counting steps or calories. Call me unimaginative, but I never found much inspiration in having a “bucket list” before or since that concept was created. I liked being a writer, why would I set my sights for a theoretical promotion. Perhaps I was limited by the friends I kept; for sure, finances limited grandiose plans. Bottom line, I don’t want to envision myself as a failure.

This backward mental meandering was taking me down on a dreary cloudy day.

But then, messages from afar brought back my perspective into this new bright year. A 12th Day of Christmas package came in the mail, with hand-crafted gifts by my great-niece. She was the creator of a couple of ornaments already on the Christmas tree, dating back to preschooler cut-and-paste art. Now a maturing young adult, her new painted treasures reflected our shared memories, especially one kolohe Irish angel ornament who mysteriously moves around the Christmas tree all season. But best of all, it was a landmark change in perspective from being recipient of gifts to giver. What a wonderful start to her journey into this new year and beyond.

Next, in an email I got words of wisdom from spiritual advisors who are a frequent uplifting source for me. Alas, not from a local source. These folks are chaplains at Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The large secular hospital, part of a center of research into pediatric medical issues, has a staff of chaplains on hand. My niece, an employee there and beneficiary of their wisdom, sends me the chaplain’s weekly “Monday Morning Meditation.” Like the chaplains at Hawaii hospitals, their mission is not only with the anxious families of patients but with the medical professionals who have the daunting task of caregiving. They can be wrung out by the weight of their duties and grief when their help is not enough to save a child’s life.

These wonderful chaplains are not preaching, proselytizing, but aim at giving comfort.

An evangelical pastor told his readers not to “feel ashamed and mad at yourself” if they failed with last year’s resolutions.

“I think one goal we need to consider this year is being kinder to ourselves when we have failed. Failure is a natural part of life that we cannot avoid,” wrote Pastor Chadd Huizenga. “Through failure we can learn more about the task or goal and more about ourselves. How can you incorporate your past failures into your future achievements?”

In her Jan. 1 meditation, another chaplain told the Children’s Wisconsin staffers to “take a few moments to acknowledge the goodness inside ourselves and then recognize a similar goodness reflected back in the faces of others. When others are challenged to find hope, the loving kindness we share from our goodness may help them to find a similar strength within themselves,” wrote the Rev. Jane Fryda, a Lutheran minister. “Maybe together we can bring healing to the brokenness of our noisy world.”

She wrote, “We live in a world which feels more broken than whole. We see more pain than we see delight. Hatred seems more prevalent than love. In a world where evil seems stronger than good, where do we find hope?

“The noise of the world drowns out the still small voices of light, goodness, trust, love and hope.

“If we look into our hearts, most of us will find goodness. I invite you to take a few moments to look inside yourself. Search your heart and find the goodness which lies within. Seek out the beauty, love and hope.”

That pastoral perspective makes more sense as a way to measure myself than resolutions.

The news from around the world makes it hard to believe it can be a year filled with positive things like peace, tolerance and reconciliation of differences. I was telling a friend who is addicted to political commentary on television that I wish I could tune out all the din, particularly that off-key trumpet blaring an anthem glorifying anger, hatred, separation, revenge. It seems to succeed in downing out forgiveness, kindness, civility and hope.

My resolution for the year is to not let that dark trumpet extinguish the light on the stairway I’ll be climbing this year.

Words from Martin Luther King Jr. engraved on his memorial in Washington, D.C. are from speeches in his crusade for equality and justice in our country. They sound a lot like prayers for us in 2024.

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant,” he said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” 1963

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.” 1965

“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective,” he said in a Christmas sermon in 1967.

And my favorite, from 1963:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

Amen to that.