Wishing you a ________ New Year*

* Please fill in the blank

As you might have noticed, I’ve not written anything for this blog since early November. I‘m not quite sure why; there has simply been a lack of “ooh, I want to write about that” ideas, and the words themselves have seemed rather sticky, not wanting to flow.

And now, on New Year’s Eve, what word would I use to describe what I wish for you or even myself as I look ahead?

For many years I called myself a pessimist, looking on the bleak side, and feeling safer that way. If you don’t expect much, you won’t be disappointed. There’s a logic in approaching 2021 that way; we’ve learnt how very tough and difficult a year can be when several major spanners are thrown in the collective works. Let’s not hope for too much, perhaps. Let’s be wary about what this coming year might hold, rather than bouncing into it enthusiastically, says the pessimist. So, I wish you a not-too-bad new year, given all the circumstances.

However, in more recent years I would have said I had become more optimistic. That’s partly job-related: as a church leader I find myself often wanting to encourage, to offer hope, to create energy and vision, to look for the good. It is about my life experience too, and all that I am grateful for; and it’s about my belief in a God of hope - hope for this life as well as the next, that distinctively Christian hope that isn’t wishful thinking but is confidence in God’s promise. The optimist in me wants to join with those who look for 2021 to be much better than 2020 - and oh, how I do long for it to be better, for all our sakes. So, I wish you a happy and hopeful and hug-filled 2021.

But the optimist in me is struggling at bit at the moment, and I certainly don’t want to wish a platitudinous Happy New Year when some might feel that denies the sorrow and fear and struggle that many of us are living with at the moment. I could instead tread the middle ground of the realist, dealing just with what is rather than what might be, feeling cautious about Covid, sad about the changes brought about by Brexit, hopeful for the long term benefits of the Covid vaccine, and reassured by the many examples of human goodness round about us. So, I wish you a new year with fewer surprises than this past year, and the prospect of some improvement over where we are now.

But realism, while solid and necessary and all of that, is simply not very inspiring, is it? I’m going into 2021 feeling rather on the low side (not terribly low, please don’t worry - still massively better than 12 months ago, but just a bit, well, low), but I really don’t want to believe that that is all that is in store.

Even if we continue to face versions of lockdown for some time to come; even if I can’t see and hug my family for quite a while; even if I am dealing with the stresses (both personal and professional) of uncertainty and change; even if I am worried about the future direction of this country and what our government is doing, and about climate change, and about the future of the Church of England; even if I am still hampered by fatigue and low mood - even with all that, I still want to think that there will be times of joy, bursts of laughter, moments of silliness, the simple pleasures of good rest, productive work, new learning, the outdoors. I want to know that sorrow is always mixed with at least a bit of joy; that hope really does “spring eternal in the human breast” (thank you, Alexander Pope); that our yearnings speak not of the impossible, but of the goodness that we can reach for and touch and know, by God’s grace.

I do know these things. I know that light shines in the darkness and is never overcome by it. I know that in the very depths of my being. But I know, too, that life is just plain hard sometimes, and not fun, and not happy, and keeping going is a slog - that the darkness can be very dark indeed.

So, what sort of a new year do I wish for? Outward circumstances will be what they will be, and much of that is beyond my control. It doesn’t really matter in that sense whether I am pessimist, optimist, or realist. What I have always been, actually, is a dreamer, and just as much as my rambling thoughts can take me down dark holes, so too they can carry me up and out and away to imagine different worlds and lives and paths. I hope, I dream, that amongst everything else, this coming year brings something bright and good and new, brings joy and goodness, brings light shining through the clouds to draw our gaze upwards. I hope that amidst the rubbish and misery and detritus, we find something that glimmers.

(Aaaand, the writer pauses, and has a moment of realisation...)

Well, would you know it - and this really is genuine in this moment as I type! - I have actually written myself into a place of hopefulness and, dare I say, happiness, as I think of the year ahead. I’m sitting here laughing at myself. Bother. So much for brooding, deep, dark, reflection. I feel really quite cheered. So bring it on, 2021. You are coming our way anyway, and we may as well get on and make of it the cheeriest and shiniest thing we can.

PS - I reserve the right to be miserable again in a couple of days‘ time, if the mood so takes me...