The Year of Our Lord

Today marks the last day of the year of our Lord 2023. Usually, this time of year has me scrambling some nostalgic year-end-ish kind of post together. I’ll often check my statistics from the last year, highlight the five most read posts, and write a short blurb about each. I’ll say thanks for reading and hope that all of this might give this little blog a bit of a bump in views as one year ends and another begins.

I’m not going to do that this year. It’s not that I’ve ceased to pay attention to my statistics (sadly, I still do, although I am happy to report that I care less than I have in previous years). It’s not that I don’t find it interesting to see which posts grab people’s eyeballs and which do not (I do). It’s not that I’m not grateful for those who take the time to read here (I am). I suppose that on this Sunday morning on the last day of the year of our Lord 2023 I just find myself in a more reflective space. Online content is ruled in so many ways by crude metrics. I don’t feel like playing that game today.

I’ve quoted Nick Cave a lot in 2023. I didn’t even know who he was until a year ago, but I heard about him on a podcast and immediately picked up his book Faith, Hope, and Carnage (which I loved). I grew to learn a bit more of his story, which contains great pain (I am always drawn to the stories of those who have been cracked open in Godward ways by suffering). I look forward to every new issue of his Red Hand Files. They’re not all home runs, but I find many of them to be remarkably insightful. It’s all a bit surprising, really. An aging Australian rock star whose music I don’t like has been one of 2023’s unanticipated gifts for me.

On the last day of the year of our Lord 2023, Nick Cave reflected on three words: “Having said that.” These three words, he said, were among his favourites. They expressed his desire for how he might engage the world in 2024:

But as the world divides into its various factions, these are words that are increasingly important. Difficult as it can be, I try my best to apply them by questioning my own thoughts – what actually is the argument from the other side? In doing so I have found that there are very few disputes, conflicts, disagreements and ideas that these three unassuming words can’t help to mediate by broadening and strengthening the conversation. Some may feel they are the undermining opponent of conviction, hostile to progress and action, but they are not. These three small words give conviction its sense of humanity and prevent it hardening into a blinkered and uncharitable stringency. ‘Having said that’ is the precondition of empathy, it is the capacity to see and understand the other side, to show that we have the necessary willingness to hold two contrasting ideas in our hand at the same time.

Cave concluded by saying that his New Year’s resolution was to practice more open-mindedness and understanding in 2024. Which sounds kinda vanilla, right? It’s like saying you’d like more peace and happiness in 2024. Or that you resolve to practice mindfulness or to be more “present in the moment” or some other vacuous platitude. How would you even measure open-mindedness, anyway? Is there even a metric for that?

And yet, is this not one of wisdom’s requirements? To see from another’s perspective? To not reflexively and obnoxiously imagine that you are always in the right and that your position on whatever issue is obviously the only virtuous and laudable one? To be able to hold hard ideas together, to be able to say that there is truth in different perspectives (not necessarily The Truth, sure, but something of truth)? To learn from the past? To acknowledge that on nearly every issue where “the right position” was obvious on the Internet, the truth has proved to be a little more complicated? To see that iron-clad righteous certainty doesn’t always (or even often) age very well?

I know there are people who will not like the preceding paragraph or the Nick Cave quote above. Perhaps even readers of this blog. It will seem weak and mealy-mouthed, compromised, lacking conviction. Justice or truth surely demands more. The hard edges of our discourse, be they on the left or the right, will have little patience for, well, patience. And surely a pastor should be willing to say hard truths! We hardy need more willingness to “see both sides.” How boring and lacking in faith! We need bold social justice warriors or uncompromising evangelists, more people willing to fight for the truth and to declare it fearlessly!

Maybe. Or maybe we need more of what Cave calls “conviction with humanity” and less “blinkered and uncharitable stringency.” I, for one, am certainly weary of the latter. I see it all around me. It is exhausting. It is not helping much of anything, at least so far as I can see. And I would very much like not to contribute to it.

Tomorrow is the first day of the year of our Lord 2024. It could well be an ugly year. There are many ominous signs which I surely do not need to enumerate here. It could also be a year that contains much that is good, true, and beautiful. I expect it will contain a bit of everything, but I have no idea to what degree. This is the world we live in, and these are the days we are given.

I would like to live and speak in such a world wisely. I would like to bring a bit more mercy and understanding. I would like to do a bit better at loving my neighbour (which includes my enemy, as Jesus frustratingly reminds me) as myself. I would like for my convictions to never decouple from my humanity. These seem to me like worthy, even necessary pursuits for the year ahead.

And I do thank you, dear reader, for dropping by. I never take for granted that there are people out there in Internet-land that take a few of the precious minutes they are granted and spend them here. I wish you every blessing in the year ahead. May the year of our Lord 2024 be graced with his presence at every turn.