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| Monday, January 02, 2012 |
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That Calendar
By webmaster @ 12:01 AM :: 268 Views ::
0 Comments :: Sister Carol Perry
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By today most of us have found our new calendars and mounted them wherever we keep such reminders of time's passing.
That official calendar is a fun thing to research as people over the centuries have endeavored to accommodate solar and lunar cycles, honor the appropriate deities and wrestle with months of uneven lengths. I was glad I wasn't alive in 1582 when ten days had to be suppressed to equalize things on a badly warped calendar. Imagine going to bed on October 5 and awakening to October 15! It must have had a bit of an Alice in Wonderland feeling.
We also tend to forget that the year once began in March with the arrival of spring. That was a genuine nature touch. There is no real reason that we should declare a new year in the dead of winter on January 1. However, that is what we do.
We also manage to live quite happily by several different calendars: this January civil calendar, our Christian church calendar that began with the first Sunday of Advent, a fiscal calendar that began on July 1, a school calendar that starts in late August or early September... We are marvelously adaptable, aren't we?
Today, we are looking to Janus, the old Roman god of beginnings, the first hour of the day, the first day of the month, any first you might imagine was sacred to him. By that same token he was also the guardian of gates and doors where his two-headed image was often mounted. He was the god who could look in two directions at once and so have wisdom from the past to direct one's steps into the future.
Strange calculations and pagan deities aside, I love the fresh page of a new year, the fresh challenge of days to come, the stimulus of starting something anew, even the challenge of trying to remember what date to put on written documents.
I worry little about resolutions. I just look ahead to what is to come with both the accumulated wisdom that Janus represents and the thrill that there is much I have not yet seen. |
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