{"id":67910,"date":"2019-12-31T18:08:06","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T16:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=67910"},"modified":"2023-07-24T17:25:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T14:25:07","slug":"the-hidden-holiness-of-the-secular-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-hidden-holiness-of-the-secular-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hidden Holiness Of The Secular New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[632,743,629],"acf":{"old_id":"67910","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33992,"related_cahpter":"384","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The light is there to be found","content":"

The celebration of the secular new year has always been among my favorite occasions. I loved it when I was an atheist, I loved it when I discovered God and religion, and I love it still. Its rampant secularity, raucous parties, loud horns, gaudy streamers and pointless parades of dazzling loveliness lend it a “Cinderella-at-the-ball” wonder.<\/span><\/p>\n

What could be more carnal and compelling than champagne’s popping corks, the dropping ball at midnight?<\/span><\/p>\n

New Year’s celebrations don’t recall any great event, any moral virtue, or noble hero. Yet I and countless millions are drawn each year to celebrate for the sake of sheer celebration.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a world of relentless violence, racism, global destruction of the biosphere, an ongoing war against women, marginalization of those with special needs, suspicion of anyone different, and a growing and pernicious gap between the richest 1% and everyone else, maybe we can see some deep and subterranean light to be refracted in our coming together, in affirming this occasion to rejoice in each other, in our still being alive, in remembering to savor the passing of time.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a conundrum in the Creation story, namely that first light was created (Genesis 1:2-5), while the sun, moon and stars were created three cosmic creation days later (Genesis 1: 14 – 19). Three days of mystery light, which emerges from nothing in particular yet bathes the entire cosmos in its fecund glow. We might well be tempted to call that light “cosmic background radiation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the medieval Kabbalists, this primordial, cosmic light was hidden away with the arrival of the stars and the sun, and is now only visible with an inner eye, to those who look for it. Our job is to locate those hidden sparks of supernal light, and to set them free. Light, in order to illuminate, must be free to bounce off of something!<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe that’s the spiritual message lurking just under the surface of the raucous and pointless celebrations of the New Year. We don’t need a reason to rejoice. We need each other. We don’t need to define a specific event to celebrate; life is sufficient. One night a year, humanity hoists a lantern which we all can share, an elation that sweeps global humanity like a wave at a stadium of planetary proportions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lurking just beneath the surface of the scientific account of the universe pulses a living light, made visible in the emerging consciousness of a cosmos groping toward expression, toward greater compassion and heightened experience. God’s lure, the invitation to optimal living, is that hidden light, just beneath the facts of our objective world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joy for its own sake, laughter and conviviality without pretext, meeting time’s advance with friends and unapologetic delight \u2013 these are the eruption of the hidden light cracking the conventional crust of our mature good sense, our dehumanizing obsession with control, our idolatrous reliance on possession as salvation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this most secular of celebrations lies hidden the most vital of religious purposes. The light is there to be found.<\/span><\/p>\n

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