The New Year

It was a farewell kiss — a single kiss — with which the night brushed the white brow of the dawn and hurried away westward(1), after its sisters, the nights gone by, stumbling over their tattered trains... And the dawn walked on unhurried, brow held high, drinking deep its breaths and gazing its fill, awash in smiles, well pleased with its spoils from the night — a newborn child, asleep upon its palm!

And the sun this morning seemed brighter of gleam and nimbler of motion than the day before; perhaps she was enchanted, content! For the fragrance of the hills carried a sweet savor to her nose, her sash embroidered with green held a lovely luster for her eye, and the goldfinches of the glens, in the dew of early morning, fell tenderly upon her ear:—

A choir of song, exulting for joy over the newborn child!

A new year has dawned. A new humanity has been born on the earth!!

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What human being is not stirred by the new, which awakens in his soul the hidden springs of joy and rapture? We desire a thing until it passes its youth; then we turn away from it, and an inner unease besets us whose source we do not know, and nothing drives it from us but something new — perhaps a new crescent moon at which we brighten, and the unease evaporates, and in its place a new hope rises!

From here, from this restless, wistful human nature, we explain our yearning for a new day, for a new moon, for a new year! As if the passing round of days and moons and years did not rob us of our youth, the choicest of our portion in life, and cast us down at the last, sucked-dry bodies with neither sap nor spirit in them?!

We know this painful truth, and we feign ignorance of its grievous consequences, and we remain, in our weakness, prey to an insistent weariness, and to a craving to be rid of the old and cast it off, and to cling to everything that gleams and glitters.

And the man who delights, on this day, in shedding his worn garment and exchanging it for a new one would do well, before that, to pass beyond the bounds of the body into the depths, and to examine the truth of his inmost self with honesty and detachment: what have his deeds left upon the page of his conscience? What evil deed has left a black stain here, and there another black stain? And what is the worth of fresh new garments in which a man preens and struts, while from his conscience rises a foul stench of rot?

How fitting it would be for this man, before securing the new garment for his body and the new shoe for his foot, to return to his Creator, humble and prostrate, on this day, begging forgiveness for his sins, shaking out his heart and washing it clean of blackness and of stench, so that he may begin his new year clean of heart, clean of conscience!

How fitting it would be for this man to go back to his neighbor, asking his pardon for wrongs done him openly and in secret, and to come away with him, both firmly settled in resolve and intention upon a purer way of life, and upon a positive will toward a better practical life — one that makes of each of them a human being closer to the ideal image of his Creator.

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Once the soul is purified and cleansed of its taints, it becomes possible for us to attend to its worldly affairs; the new garment becomes beautiful upon its wearer, and New Year's Day takes on a new meaning, in harmony with its lofty human message.

The Editor-in-Chief

(1) From a talk broadcast on New Year's Day over the Near East Station.