If a crystal ball were available for our end-of-year consultation, it would probably resemble this year's December 26 Full Moon through the trees on my block. Its contents are barely discernible.
A year ago, as I held my breath and thought that perhaps we were really beyond COVID, I hopefully "unveiled the Three" for 2023.
But the year now ending turned out to be such a stunner, in so many ways, in so many places, for so many people, that I revisited the "Three" with this updated version:--
Teetering on today's Eve of Now and Then, I think I'll just invoke Janus. A key god of the Roman pantheon, he with his two faces can be said to look towards the past and towards the future. In fact, as the god of beginnings, endings, birth, death, war, peace, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, windows, frames, passages – well, he can play it any way he wants.
Here's my copy of an unnamed artist's stunning image of Janus, found on the internet. (Hmmm….would Artificial Intelligence also be a field for Janus' patronage?)
With the skies so dark lately, I made one last 2023 stroll around VanDusen Gardens – feeling the borderline gloom of its grotto in daytime – when its "Festival of Lights" display is disconnected until sunset.
But then, with memories of times past, I walked through the dark passage and out into springtime of another year. Janus would have had that all figured out.
With hope once again (or at least, acceptance), I can never let the old year go without the words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
"Come, let us welcome the New Year,
full of things that never have been."
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