Through the Gates of the Year

Today, the second of January, 2025, we have come through Janus’s Gates. We have passed through the Gates of Reflections, Hopes, and Dreams. Marking the secular Gregorian New Year has passed. Many of us find ourselves at desks or counters, in vehicles or using software we have not visited for many days. 

I have sung my hymns to Aphrodite and Inanna, and I have written to myself. I have fluffed my feathers for a date. I have eaten a bagel, taken my meds, fussed ineffectually over my clothing, and here I am at “my” coffeehouse. One of the last eggnog lattes of the season is mine!

As we come into the January of 2025, I introduce or re-introduce, the bywords of this Way of the River neighborhood.

The Wisdom of John O’Donohue

In “For One Who is Exhausted: A Blessing,” John O’Donohue writes many beautiful lines, but it is always the end of the poem to which I return:

“Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself.”

Ahhhh, to be excessively gentle with yourself. Now it’s true, O’Donohue is writing the poem-blessing for those who are exhausted. So maybe you feel as though it doesn’t apply right now? Perhaps the wintertime holidays leave you refreshed and ready for what is to come.

But aren’t most of us exhausted too much of the time? I suppose we could go around and around about that, but there are deep reasons, both cultural and personal, for exhaustion. There are deep needs for Tricia Hersey’s Nap Ministry. There are deep reasons for us to invite one another into moments of tenderness, quiet, and peace.

And there are times and places when we cannot not be exhausted. When duty calls us in a way that we must not ignore.

Still, I take a page from O’Donohue’s poem and his excessive gentleness. I have taken it in and realized that for me, the thing is not that gentleness needs to come in a big wave, an earthquake of rearrangement. It not be excessive, but just persistent.

Persistent Gentleness

Gentleness is a quality of grace. It is a quality of permission, of allowing ourselves to be imperfect–or to come quietly to terms with the fact that we are imperfect and always will be. 

Gentleness, that child of grace, is the way we remember that the person in front of us in line is bearing suffering about which we know nothing. And it is also the way we remember that we ourselves are that person. We bear suffering about which we know nothing. And when we don’t know our suffering, we are not able to choose skillfully, kindly, how we deal with it. 

So gentleness. Gentleness over and over. Gentleness persistently. Gentleness returned to after abandoning it. It will always be here for us if we look hard enough. And persistence will bring us back to gentleness, if we intend it so.

Gentle Persistence

As the poet says, I require a wholesome discipline, one I call  gentle persistence. 

Persistence, that quality of tenacity, repetition, and insistence, is another essential characteristic for me.. Maybe yours too? And it is the way to apply gentleness to our hearts and our hopes.

I do not want my gentleness to become niceness, to peel away from kindness and into the platitudes and false, conflict-averse smiles of niceness. I do not want my gentleness to roll itself into a lack of ambition or hope. I do not want my gentleness to become wan and pale. 

I do not want my gentleness to become a reason not to try. I cannot tell you what you should try. However, to paraphrase Gandalf, despair is for the inerrant fortuneteller, the one who knows the future beyond the shadow of a doubt. They perceive, in their infallibility, only suffering. There is always a reason to try. 

To try to breathe in this moment, to recognize the breathe, and to pause.. To try to love well. To try to extend kindness when I don’t feel like it.

For me, the things I need to try to do, the things to which I need to bring a gentle persistence are equanimity, order, movement that both feels good and helps my body, and keeping undue anxiety in check.

Persistent, tenacious gentleness. Gentle, graceful persistence. These things have gotten me through many hard times, and I hope they bring you toward your North Star, as well.

If you do Facebook, please come to the Land of the Persistently Gentle and the Gently Persistent. We are at The Way of the River Community and you are welcome there. I look forward to seeing your beloved faces and complex natures. (Thank you, Annie Dillard, from  The Meaning of Life.)