Again and Again

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana

Meditation: by Dana Gioia “New Year’s”

Let other mornings honor the miraculous.

Eternity has festivals enough.

This is the feast of our mortality,

The most mundane and human holiday.

On other days we misinterpret time,

Pretending that we live the present moment.

But can this blur, this smudgy in-between,

This tiny fissure where the future drips

Into the past, this flyspeck we call now

Be our true habitat? The present is

The leaky palm of water that we skim

From the swift, silent river slipping by.

The new year always brings us what we want

Simply by bringing us along—to see

A calendar with every day uncrossed,

A field of snow without a single footprint.

Reading: from the Jewish scriptures, the Book of Ecclesiastes, 1:3-10 (New Living Translation)

3 What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. 6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. 7 Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. 8 Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 

Reading: by the Jungian psychologist James Hillman from The Force of Character and the Lasting Life (p. 63) 

Repetition is a major specialty of old age. Conventional geriatrics links this habit to failing short-term memory: You don’t realize you’re telling the same story again because you don’t recall having already told it, and often. Repetition, they say, demonstrates a withering brain.

Old people repeat, almost exactly. If this is a symptom, it is also their style. I once interrupted a garrulous uncle in his eighties in the middle of one of his boringly familiar travel stories. “You’ve already told me that,” I said. Quick as a wink, and just as irritated as I, he shot back, “I like telling it.”… He refused to allow the eye and ear of youth to judge a characteristic of later years. He knew the joy of the groove.

Repetition brings together the very old and the very young. They share this pleasure. Why conceive of repetition as a failure rather than as a necessary component of imagination? Why not, instead, conceive of the need for novelty as an addiction? After all, repetition is essential to the oral tradition, to passing on stories from generation to generation. It seems to be the means by which the lore of the ancestors is kept alive and kept right….

Reading: by May Sarton, a poem entitled “New Year Resolve”

The time has come

To stop allowing the clutter

To clutter my mind

Like dirty snow,

Shove it off and find

Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change,

Let silence in like a cat

Who has sat at my door

Neither wild nor strange

Hoping for food from my store

And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.

She will rarely speak or mew,

She will sleep on my bed

And all I have ever been

Either false or true

Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not

As old age silts the stream,

To shove away the clutter,

To untie every knot,

To take the time to dream,

To come back to still water.

Again and Again

A Sermon Delivered on January 4, 2015

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

New Year’s Eve this week was quite a day. Elaine, the kids and I woke up that morning in a motel south of Big Sur on the California coast. Our challenge was to get home before midnight. We checked out early, hopped in the car for a four hour drive to Oakland, where we caught our Southwest flight to Midway airport in Chicago. 

The good thing about flying Southwest, we learned, is that you don’t have to pay extra for your checked baggage. We also learned that this means a lot of people tend to bring a lot of baggage. So though we arrived at Midway reasonably on time, around 8:30 in the evening, waiting for our three duffel bags to appear on the baggage carousel was much more time-intensive than we had expected. And the fact that we weren’t sure where our bags were supposed to arrive, because all the information screens were broken, didn’t help. 

Finally our luggage arrived, we bolted to the airport shuttle to economy parking, piled into our car, and hit the road. Elaine, the speediest driver in the family, took the wheel. 

The traffic gods smiled on us that evening, and amazingly we arrived safely at home just minutes before midnight. I broke out some LaCroix sparkling water for a New Years toast just as the last seconds of 2014 ticked by. When the clock struck midnight, I gave Elaine a kiss, and listened for the sound of the New Year commencing. I listened for a bang, a siren, or at least some firework. But I didn’t hear a thing. I looked out the window, and the night looked as dark as ever. The first moments of 2015 looked no different than the last moments of 2014.

The next morning I got up to make my first 2015 cup of tea. And you know what, it looked and smelled and tasted just like the cup of tea I have made every morning for the last weeks and months. 

And when I went for a morning walk, the neighborhood streets of 2015 looked exactly like the ones I walked in 2014, and 2013, and 2012.

Some part of me expected 2015 to somehow be different. It is a brand new year, after all. And some small part of me was disappointed to realize that nothing changed. But, of course, I know better. That’s the way of the world: the sun rises the same way, again and again, and I will go about my mundane business day after day.

* * *

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This saying is often attributed to Einstein, and sometimes to Mark Twain or Benjamin Franklin. But – according to sources on the all-knowing internet -  it was most likely first written by Rita Mae Brown, in a 1983 mystery novel.

If the frequency with which this definition of insanity is cited is evidence of its accuracy, then there must be something to it.

As the Atlantic Monthly put it: “Insanity is doing something over and over, but expecting a different result. That pretty well describes campaign finance reform in America.” (“The Only Way to Fix Campaign-Finance Regulation Is to Destroy It,” July 30, 2012)

Or as the Washington Post put it: “They say that the essence of futility is to keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result. But is that what key government forecasters are doing in determining their outlook for the economy?” (“Forecasters Keep Thinking There’s a Recovery Just Around the Corner. They’re Always Wrong,” Feb. 19, 2013)

As a the New York Times article put it: “They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same action, and expecting a different result. By that measure, Congress has lost its mind.” (“Over the Cliff and Back,” Jan. 4, 2013)

* * *

Doing the same thing over and over again – if not a sign of insanity – at least often feels dispiriting. 

The story of Sisyphus is one of the most well-known of Greek myths. It's the story of a king, who tries to outwit the god Zeus. Homer says Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals, who, among other things, put death in chains. 

As Albert Camus tells the story, Sisyphus was accused of a disrespecting the gods. He stole their secrets.  And for this he was finally condemned to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain. Every time he reached the top, the boulder would tumble back down, and Sisyphus had to take up his task again and again for all eternity.

The ancient Greeks imagined that endlessly repetitious labor was the worst kind of punishment they could inflict on a human being.

* * *

The notion that repetition is inherently dispiriting is also found in the words of the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes. What do we get for all our hard work? Generations come and generations go, but nothing changes. All is vanity, all is meaningless, all our toil is nothing but chasing after wind. There is nothing new under the sun.

The Preacher says, doing the same thing again and again is pointless. Expecting anything to change, anything to be different, anything to be new is insanity. But this is not the Preacher’s final answer. In the end he hints that there are deeper truths worth pursuing, truths more meaningful than all our striving for worldly profit or pleasure.

* * *

In an article entitled “The Definition of Insanity Is…” the clinical psychologist Ryan Howes questions the saying that links insanity to repetition. He says, doing something again and again can be very valuable. The word for this kind of positive persistence is “perseverance.” Perseverance means sticking with a course of action in spite of all difficulties, obstacles or discouragement.

The story of Sisyphus and the book of Ecclesiastes are talking about something else. Psychologists call it “perseveration”: “the pathological, persistent repetition of a word, gesture or act.” Perseveration can be caused by anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We engage in perseveration when we try to finish unfinished business by recreating old unresolved problems, all the while hoping for a better outcome. Some describe these dynamics in terms of an inner child that exists within every adult. When this hidden child feels helpless and hurt, it can be a real challenge for the adult to foster healing. Our motivations are then misunderstood, our goals misguided, and we can get stuck in unhealthy patterns. 

Perseveration can seem like a kind of insanity. But perseverance is just the opposite. Ryan Howes says, 

“Repeating the same constructive behavior over and over, hoping (one day) for a positive result is difficult but virtuous. It's the effort made by eating oatmeal every morning, brushing your teeth after every meal and daily journaling. It's weekly therapy, consistent workouts and taking time for spirituality. It's … Mother Theresa tirelessly serving the poor. Or someone working to systematically overcome shyness, build healthier habits or communicate better with their spouse. It's a 12-stepper taking it "one day at a time." The qualities of perseverance, consistency, loyalty - these are beneficial to health and definitely not insane. And they're doing the same thing every day, hoping for some measure of progress.” (Psychology Today, July 27, 2009)

* * *

For James Hillman doing the same thing over and over again also has unique value. For him it has less to do with acquiring new skills, and more to do with deepening our understanding and appreciation for past experience. 

As we grow older, we relish repetition. We are happy to hear the same old stories, and tell the same old tales. Novelty interests us less and less. Instead we prefer to savor our memories. In reviewing our life we are trying to make better sense of it. As Hillman puts it, we are attempting  “to turn [past] events into experiences, to draw out their emotion and gather them into patterns of meaning.”

“Without insight into its nature, [the past is] a mere jumble of unintelligible facts, a life history strung together by dates and jobs, trips and illnesses like a vast… biography stuffed with data and empty of conclusions.” (p. 92)

James Hillman writes: 

“When Grandmother tells yet again about the chimney fire that blazed onto the roof and almost burned the house down, and recounts how each member of the family did this and that, the story is boring only if you listen with an ear for fact. 

But the story is also a lesson about concealed dangers, about protecting “home,” about family collaboration, and about the [characters involved].

Why must these stories be told repeatedly? What is the story trying to tell beyond Grandmother’s telling, and why are grandmothers through the ages repositories of stories? These stories, repeated and repeated, over and over, show the loremaking, mythologizing function of the psyche, which turns the disasters and celebrations of the family, of the town into foundation stones that give background and underground to the patternless flow of daily events. By means of repetition the psyche forms significance from the ordinary. It is as if the soul begs for the same stories so that it knows that something will last.” (p. 64)

As we grow older, our short-term memory seems to become less reliable. We forget where we put down the car keys, where we left our glasses, and whether we turned off the oven. But our long-term memories of places we’ve been, and people we knew decades ago become stronger and more interesting to us.

When we are young, we are fascinated by all things new, and history seems irrelevant. As we grow older, and hopefully wiser, our perspective shifts. Acquiring new information seems less relevant, while gaining a better understanding of the past seems more important. We have less of a need for novelty and in order to grasp deeper truths, we let other things go.

* * *

This is a notion of wisdom also found the pages of the Tao te Ching. In Chapter 48, Lao Tzu writes: 

In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. 

In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped.

Our task, says Lao Tzu, is to emulate the ancient masters:

The ancient Masters were profound and subtle.
Their wisdom was unfathomable.
There is no way to describe it;
all we can describe is their appearance.

They were careful
as someone crossing an iced-over stream…
Fluid as melting ice…
Receptive as a valley.
Clear as a glass of water.

The question Lao Tzu asks each of us, in Chapter 15, is: 

Do you have the patience to wait 

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

* * *

New Years is the most mundane and human holiday, the feast of our mortality. It is a celebration of all the paths we have traveled, and that have brought us to this day. It is a moment to pause and ponder the past, to savor our memories, and to imagine what lessons we have yet to learn. 

This year, may we clear some of the clutter from our minds. May we shove off the clutter like dirty snow, and find hidden beneath it clear time, clear water. 

May this year allow us to clear the silt from the stream of time, to let the mud settle, and let the water become still.

May we take the time to dream of days gone by,

of lessons we learned and people we loved. 

And may the wisdom we gain guide us on our way,

As we take another step into the future,

Again and again, every moment of every day.  

Amen.