Starting at the Beginning

It’s a very good place to start, the beginning (or so sang Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music)! We’ve gotten a new calendar (if we’re the type to keep a paper one around), one that bears the numbers 2026, and we’re off to the races! A new year! For many of us, a fresh start! We might begin a new exercise routine or a novel dieting regime. Maybe we take on a remodeling project in our home or condo or resolve to shed ourselves of some of the clutter that lurks at the back of our closets and attics. Many of us feel renewed energy as the calendar clicks forward and we believe that we can start afresh at the beginning of the year.

Yet it is still a season riddled with sadness, sickness, grief, and struggle. The news of the world hasn’t improved, and human beings haven’t all converted into… well, humane human beings. Covid lingers, and the flu wreaks havoc with our health, and the darkness still comes earlier and lasts longer than we’d like. For some, even though the calendar presents a new beginning, it doesn’t feel all that new. Layer all this stuff with the emptiness of the disappearance of family members and friends who populated the holidays and with the realization of the financial toll our bank accounts absorbed during the “most wonderful time of the year,” and we might find ourselves desperately in search of a fresh start, a new beginning.

I knew a woman in Kansas City who celebrated her “rebirth” day every year. Not her birthday, but her re-birthday. That’s language some Christians use for their spiritual awakening or conversion to faith. And some can pinpoint such a day, such an occasion, some definitive time when it seemed that life began anew. It’s right out of the New Testament, in the gospel of John, chapter 3. But for many, that’s not the case. Life began at birth (or even before, depending on how life is understood) and has rolled along year after year with little if any indications of newness. Sure, our bodies have changed because that’s what bodies do. Once aging starts, there’s no going back to the beginning. Little wonder many of us are not the greatest fans of these contraptions we inhabit!

We all begin in a body and we become a body all unto ourselves. And we exist on this planet and on this planet only. What are we to make of it? We may wish it were otherwise, but it is what it is. There are beginnings and endings all over our lives. Where shall we start? How about right here, right now!