Author: Stephen Reno

Some years ago, I was on a business trip to South Korea, a guest of a university there that had invited me to give some lectures. The hospitality was gracious and generous and included several excursions to places of interest outside of Seoul. At the end of my third day, however, my host, Professor Hwang, advised me that on the next day not he but a colleague would be my guide, as he himself had a “duty” to fulfill.

When Professor Hwang did rejoin me two days later, I tried carefully and respectfully to inquire about the “duty” he had mentioned.Smiling kindly, he asked if I knew yesterday’s date. Of course,” I replied, and mentioned the number of the day in May. His smile grew broader as gently he reminded me it had been the birthday of the Buddha, and that, according to Korean tradition, at least once in a person’s life she or he should observe that sacred day by visiting and bringing flowers to that teacher who had been most influential in the formation of the student’s character. Professor Hwang had done just that. His story touched me deeply.

Three years later — by good fortune, also in the month of May — I was in Santa Barbara, a city to which my high school principal, Father Carroll O’Sullivan, had retired. He had been my mentor all through those long-ago days, but I had lost touch. He welcomed me warmly, graciously accepted the flowers, and as we had tea, I recounted my Korean experience as an explanation for my visit to him now. He was deeply touched. For a couple of hours, we reminisced on those times, and we ended our visit with a photograph being taken. “Father O,” as we all had called him that back then, died just a couple of months later. That photograph is now on my desk.

Yesterday’s Union Leader carried the worrisome news of a recent survey that revealed nearly half of the state’s teachers are seriously considering leaving their jobs. Such an eventuality, understandable given the unprecedented pressures today on their profession — pandemic-related accommodations, workload, fractious school board meetings, uncertainties in the face of legislation restricting what can and cannot be taught, overly officious regulators — would be terrible even to contemplate. And yet, who of us could not, given but a few moments of reflection, identify that one teacher who made such a welcome difference in our early lives?

Yes, this is the dead of winter and flowers are harder to come by and travel more difficult. But do we need to wait until May to contact that certain teacher and just say, “Thank you?”

Perhaps more than any other time of year, New Year’s Day is when we are most conscious of the very passage of time. The sentiments of the day bid us both look back and look ahead. Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames and endings, even lives on in the name given the first month of the year. The Scottish song many struggle to sing at midnight New Year’s Eve, “Auld Lang Syne,” carries the meaning “Long old times,” and prompts us to reflect on the times past that bring us to this time. Perhaps that is why this year I received so many “Happy New Year” text messages from old friends from whom I had not heard for many years.

This New Year has, however, brought an especial opportunity to reflect on time: Witness the many media sources that carried, in one form or another, the headline “A Second Pandemic Year.” Like the first, this second pandemic year has altered our experience and measurement of time. Yes, it has slowed things down, kept us at home or at least closer to it, but it has also given us new ways to mark its passage: ways that are linked to the pandemic. As many families gathered this holiday season, they acknowledged when last they were able to do so because of the pandemic. In addition, how many Thanksgiving dinners, holiday parties and other gatherings were canceled or at least reduced in attendance owing to a positive Covid test result? Such are the new markers of the times, along with, of course, the occasions of sickness or death of family members and loved ones.

In ancient folk traditions, mask wearers would gather and dance, a practice that developed in the 16th century into what was known as a “masque.” At such events, the wearing of a mask granted anonymity to a person, and although the designs of the masks could differ in ornamentation and style, all who were wearing them knew they had something in common despite those differences. Might we mask-wearers now be living through a modern version of a masque?

Perhaps at New Year’s Day 2023 we shall be able to look back to these long ago mask-wearing times and reflect on the masque of which we have all been a part. St. Augustine once wrote, “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” Might we know better the time this time next year?

Following closely the end of daylight saving time comes my recognition of just how much shorter are the passing days. Activities are now more narrowly confined to daylight hours and for some of us even the prospect of driving much after dark is less and less attractive. As soon as those realities set in for me, I begin to long for spring. Call it the foolishness of a native Californian now living for more than 50 years in New England, but truth to tell, I do feel a kinship with those peoples across time who found ways of bringing light into these darkened days.

I write this on the first Sunday of Advent, which at sunset is also the beginning of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. Both Christians and Jews light candles — the Advent wreath and the menorah respectively — (and again respectively) to prepare for the birth of Jesus at Christmas and to commemorate the rededication of the Second Temple.

In these days, also dark owing to the persistent lingering of the pandemic, those ancient traditions and observances carry even more significance and appeal. They can bring some sense of order to a very disordered time. How often do we hear ourselves say we hope for a return to normalcy? We are impatient for things to be set right, to have a kind of springtime in which we can carry on as we were able to do before.

In some religious traditions, symbols have such power that they actually bring about what it is they symbolize. Such are called “sacraments.” The word comes from Roman antiquity and refers to the oath a new soldier took, while grasping the Roman standard, the swearing itself making him “sacer,” “given to the gods.” In our own times as well, gestures can bring about what they symbolize: the placing of a wedding ring, for example.

I wonder if the religious ceremonies of lighting Advent candles or Hanukkah candles can be for us our individual attempts to bring order, hope and peace into our lives and those of others. We know the visual impact of hundreds, if not thousands, of individual lights held aloft at a concert. Might our own lightings be illuminative of our way — individually and collectively — into a brighter time? It would be a beginning. As the poet John O’Donohue says so beautifully, “We are never alone in our beginning as it might seem at the time, A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth that are stored up for us.”

Whether the topic is the pandemic, the economy, the climate, world affairs or politics, we all seem to be having serious conversations these days. And to come to those conversations with knowledge, we often feel there is so much to read, to view or to listen to. It seems overwhelming. What I have observed, sadly, is that those conversations too often end with a comment such as, “I am really worried” or “I feel so depressed” or “Will things ever change for the better?”

The roller coaster of daily life these days contributes greatly to this sense of dis-ease. With its flow and ebb, Covid-19 keeps us shifting our behavior, ever uneasy about where to go, what to do or with whom to be, and with what consequences. The rising cost of living, the persistence of hate speech and acts, the inequities of our society, and the sufferings of so many cast deep shadows over the lives of so many. No wonder there exists the mental stress about which we read, which we see in others and we feel at times ourselves.

A recently departed dear friend once counseled me, “Hope is that most noble of human virtues. Especially in tough times, we need it to keep us going and to do what we need to do.”

Those words came back to me as by chance I happened upon a poem by John O’Donohue titled “This is the Time to be Slow” (from his collection To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings). While the very title of the poem was strangely, and in a welcome way, quieting to me, it was an image in his poem that impressed me most by its simplicity and beauty.

He counsels the reader not to let “the wire brush of doubt scrape [from your heart] all sense of yourself.” Instead, he urges we remain generous even as our “hesitant light” may flicker. For with hope, we shall, in time, find a new beginning. We’ll step again on “fresh pastures of promise.”

A poem is a purse made of words into which a treasure is kept (or so I once heard it described). O’Donohue’s poem did indeed carry a treasure greatly in need at this time in all of our lives. His image of “the wire brush of doubt” and its potentially abrasive effect is truly wise counsel too. I hope to keep it firmly in mind and to share it with others.

Over the years we were colleagues, my friend was a gifted and visionary leader in his field. To whatever task he put his hand, he always promised “to leave the woodpile a little higher than [he] found it.” He succeeded admirably and his retirement was well-deserved. To retirement as well he set the same goal, namely to take full advantage of the time and, in the words of Robert Kennedy, “to make gentle the life of this world.” That, too, he did when he published a book of reflections on life in the region in which he and his wife had settled.

It was a shock, then, when the news came that my friend had entered a memory care facility. I knew then that our long conversations about the books we were reading, the events of the day, and the state of things generally, and especially the ways of Mother Nature at this critically changing time, were to be no more.

Not able now to hear his voice, I turned instead to his printed words, and these spoke even more forcefully and compellingly that when first I had read them, though at the time of that reading, many of his observations were underlined, to wit:

“It is in weathering that knowledge comes to the heart.”

“Love is a long gift in a hard season.”

“We are either solitary by nature and search for community, or are inherently communal and long for solitude.”

“Then, too, I am among that last generation that will have lived a full lifetime with the printed page. Everything is in electronic form today. My bookcase of old friends is already a museum of obsolete technology.”

“That memory fades is a blessing the moving sun bestows that otherwise would trap all we know in shadow and a single sounding of the bell.”

My mornings, like those of friends I know, begin with a quiet time. “Meditation” would be too grand a term. That half hour serves, as my late mother-in-law was fond of describing, as “the rudder of the day.” It is now my friend’s little book of reflections that gives the jump-start to my musings. He would approve of that, most certainly. I wish I could tell him so.

Ultimately, my friend puts it all in context: “Only that nature harms and heals alike — self serene, and without regret or praise.” He has truly accomplished his mission: the woodpile is taller.

Much of what passes for public conversation these days could well be likened to a poker game where each player slaps down a card and the others try quickly to put down one of higher value. Whether the topic is immigration, gun control/rights, or abortion, the exchange soon becomes heated and the pace frantic. What is lost, quite simply, is listening.

For 25 years, there had been a space in our lives where that was not the pattern. Rather than shouting, blustering assertions, or insulting innuendos, NHPR’s The Exchange had been true to its name, a thoughtful, measured, and substantive exploration of issues and events among people with diverse and often deeply different views (NHPR discontinued the show last month).

Twenty-five years of The Exchange also brought us lighter fare about matters we didn’t know we didn’t know, such as the issues of pets along our hiking paths, developing alternatives to maple sugar syrups, and the curious doings of some of New Hampshire’s long-ago governors.

These conversations, in the truest sense of that term, were moderated by Laura Knoy, host of the program since its inception.

Whether interviewing a U.S. presidential candidate on a swing through our state or hosting a three-way exploration of substance abuse, Laura consistently modeled her program on what she herself values, generous listening. The term first used by Rachel Naomi Remen and later by Krista Tippett is “listening that is powered by curiosity.”

It is further suggested that this is “a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive.” For anyone who had consistently tuned in to The Exchange each weekday morning, it would be clear that generous listening is instinctive with Laura.

And that is the point about what so many of us will miss. The program not only facilitated a statewide forum for the examination of issues critical to our community but also modeled behavior by which civil conversations even about profoundly contentious and divisive matters can take place.

At a time of such polarization, we need many more such exemplars of what our “better selves” could be to one another.

You can contact Steve Reno at [email protected].