Deal Me 52 More
Happy New Year! Today we’ve all been dealt a new hand. Are we ready to play it? We may not agree as to who is dealing us these cards, be it a deity who’s got the whole world in His hands, or that impersonal Ground of All Being whom we worship but only seem to know in after-the-fact reflections of cosmic order and beauty, or that fickle and unpredictable divinity we call chance or luck, karma or fate. In any case, t0day we’re on the receiving end of the first distribution of cards from the deck marked 2025, one card for each week that, God willing or “if the fates allow,” we will live to see to completion in this new year just beginning. Unlike playing cards that come in four recognizable suits embossed with numbers 2 to 10, 3 bearing the charicatured faces of royals, and 4 being solitary aces, the cards we will draw this year share the same features we’ve seen each year we’ve been invited to play: they are all blank, and for obvious reasons.
You see, the first day of every year comes with a promise, or better put, a hope, that we will get to play another hand of 52 in a trip around the sun that none of us has ever seen, touched or experienced beyond our imaginings of what might lie ahead Yet unlike cards we pick up from the table in a spirited game of rummy, pinochle or poker, these bear no images, numerical or otherwise. All of them, like the minutes, hours, days and weeks that lie ahead, are clean slates awaiting whatever we, and circumstance, will write on them.
My interest in weeks was recently triggered by a book on time management, its title a provocative hook that has led me down a number of rabbit holes of reflection. While its contents offer much good counsel on how we should look at and try to spend our time, its title is what set my mind to much thinking about the meaning of human longevity. I have previously come to terms with biblical reckonings of the human lifespan, as in the “threescore and ten, fourscore if we’re strong” formulation from Psalm 90:10. And I have often pondered my own life expectancy as a male born in 1951 (66 years) as compared to one born this very day (79.3 years). Finding myself now between these two terminus calculations, I waffle over whether I should feel blessed to be living on so much borrowed time, or threatened by the onrushing parenthesis that will someday be etched on whatever funereal plaque or stone marks my having been here (1951- ????).
The writer of this book came up with 4,000 based on an average human life expectancy of 76.6 years, which if broken down into weeks—and shorter time increments—adds up to…
If you’re like me, the bigger numbers on this chart may boggle the mind to such a degree that they become little more than nonsense figures that amaze more than they resonate with us in any meaningful way. No wonder a universe believed to have been made in six days is far easier to grasp than one that has played out for 13.7 billion years (give or take .02 billion). To be honest I think we all step into imaginary time when we try to conceive anything much beyond our awareness of, and memory of, events that we have personally experienced. That is why the relatively short increments of seconds, hours, days, weeks and months are so understandable and real to us. We know we have lived in and through such time frames because we can remember so many of them at the mention of an old friend’s name, the sound of a beloved melody, or the smell of an unforgettable fragrance. While these recollections may not always ring true to actual history, we nonetheless hold onto them as sacred archives of a life story that we, and we alone, know to be real.
Breaking a life down into weeks offers us a new stab at coming to terms with the flow of our existence. For me it means that I’m now beginning week 3873 of my sojourn as a human being on this planet. That’s a lot of time, most of which I can’t call to mind given the fact that I was a small child for a portion of it (170 or more of my weeks) and have slept through as much of a third of it (1291 weeks). In respect to my consciousness of being alive, I’m really starting week 2412, doing so with the hope that I will be able to make the most of these next 52 as a cognitively aware and spiritually awake human being.
Like many, I am inclined to make resolutions as I turn the page of another annual calendar. But I’m not holding my breath as which ones, if any, will be more than musings concocted on a winter’s morn. Instead I begin this year looking forward to inscribing something meaningful and worthwhile on the blank surfaces of each of the 52 cards that, I trust, will come my way. So I awaken to this January 1st with a lengthy list of things I might want to change about myself but with little resolve to make the effort to do so. Instead, I plan on being more intentional in my awareness of such life-enhancing, spirit renewing aptitudes and attitudes as…
Wanting to hear more of the sound of your voice, which, I’ve recently discovered, becomes audible to me each time I read a letter or card or email with your name on it, or gratefully think about something you’ve conveyed to me via a face book comment. The years may age us and miles and circumstances may separate us…but the sound of voices—yours and mine—remain our trademarks that never change or grow old.
Savoring the stimulation that comes from reading good books each day, writing thoughts and reflections on life that I hope are worth sharing, and teaching Bible studies to audiences for whom learning is not a means to an end but a joyous opportunity to deepen and broaden their understanding of life and self.
Taking none of the days in this new year for granted, but receiving each day’s first breaths and first steps as blessings provided by a Creator who, for reasons I may not fathom as much as appreciate, has given me another chance to live and love, contribute and make a difference for good.
Resting in the serenity that comes with each moment of awareness of what I can, and cannot change about myself, about you, and about the world as it was, is, and might yet become.
Week one of 2025, the first of 52 laps to be run, has now begun. What it will become, what it will ultimately mean to us and make of us remains to be seen, and felt, conceived and understood. How fortunate we are to have the chance to do this once again.
“Oh God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come… Be Thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.”
