This week in conversation, a phrase floated through my head, "Grace cuts through all interpretation."
This week before New Years Day will be filled with interpretation. The years of the Pandemic have weighted heavily with interpretation. Perhaps this the way of things when human being meet with events that shift the axis of culture and life spills open into a debate of meaning, like the imponderable question, 'what does the Pandemic mean?'
The human mind naturally divides events and things into categories and subcategories in order to gain some control and understanding. So there is a natural movement to divide time and the cycles of the seasons into years, and as a new year is born, to interpret and give meaning and judgement to the issues of the year that is passing. Interpretation is a kind of judgement that assigns meaning. It is an aspect of human intellect that helps us problem solve and learn as we equip ourselves for the future. There is a usefulness in exercising our interpretive faculty; we assess risks, sort through values in order to make decisions, evaluate leaders and sources of information.--all of these skills require interpretive processes.
Yet, when we talk of letting go of the old year, spiritually, we begin by letting go of our personal interpretation. When we forgive the wounds of the old year, we discover they too are interpretations. Our minds have put together all the movements and activity of 2021, the times of emptiness and times of crises, fear and frustration, hope followed by disappointment, solitude and separation, and these have created a field of interpretation, that now is to be forgiven and released to make way for the new. Letting go our our viewpoint is not easy. This process sparked that thought that still circles through me, "Grace cuts through all interpretation".
Grace is unearned Good. Grace is the gift that expresses as healing, as love, as creative possibilities and artful solutions; grace is the sudden awareness of the beauty all around us, and the wonder of the world and the lives that intertwine with ours. It is a truth that hovers beyond our interpretations of life. The unearned, and often unseen, Good. (Susan Nettleton)
"Behold, I make all things new." (Rev 21:5)