The Year of the Tiger
According to the zodiac of East Asia, today is
the beginning of the Year of the Tiger. This year the “Chinese New Year” begins
on February 1, but for a long time now, Japan has celebrated January 1 as New
Year’s Day, while retaining many of the ancient traditions.
This is “my” year, for I was born in the Year
of the Tiger. In East Asia there is a sign for each of twelve years, not twelve
signs in one year as in the West, and each repeat in a twelve-year cycle.
It is fairly easy to guess what year a person
was born in if you know their sign, so in Japan it was not unusual to ask for a
person’s zodiac sign rather than asking how old they were. So, since this is
the year of my zodiac sign, you can probably guess I will turn 84—but if you
guessed 72, that’s all right!
Is Time Circular or Linear?
While not hesitating to celebrate the new
year, whether in the West or in the East, I do have a bit of a problem with
emphasizing a circular way of thinking rather than a linear one.
Years ago, a Japanese friend pointed out that
from Christianity’s linear viewpoint there is no qualitative difference between
January 1 and any other day of the year. The Christian (as well as the Jewish and
Muslim) worldview is based on history rather than nature.
Thus, it is more significant that today is the
beginning of the year 2022 than it is January 1. We are a part of history moving
from the past to the future more than in a cycle of nature as the earth revolves
around the sun.
The latter view is sometimes linked to “the
myth of eternal return” (Eliade), which I see as being at odds with the
Judeo-Christian worldview. For that reason, I have some problem with the
“church year” emphasis, which to some extent is based on the concept of
circularity rather than linearity.
To remember the momentous events in the life
of Christ each year is good, of course. But do we really need to wait all
during Advent to celebrate the coming of Christ if we know he was born over
2,000 years ago?
And do we need to be sorrowful all through
Lent if we know that Jesus has already been resurrected and we are living in
the joy of new life?
Forward Like a Tiger
According to one website, “People who were born in a Tiger year share personality traits
with tigers. They are most active and full of valor and vigor. They usually act
decisively but cautiously. In the face of setbacks, resistance, or failure,
they make prompt decisions.”
Further, “Male tigers are energetic and
ambitious. They are also very aggressive and dominating. They like to challenge
themselves . . . to achieve all the goals they set. They keep their promises
and do what they have promised.”
Well, I can’t deny that I recognize myself in those
descriptions—although as I approach my 84th birthday this year, I
certainly don’t have the vigor or energy that I had most of my life.
Whether you were born in the Year of the Tiger
or not, I pray that as we all move forward through the New Year like a tiger
and be blessed with health and happiness.
And may we find strength for the journey and
joy in the struggle for peace and justice in each of the days in 2022.
_____
** My Jan.
1, 2010, post was titled “Year of the Tiger,” so that is why “(again)” is
in the title of this article. This post is similar to (but not the same) as
that article posted 12 years ago. And in spite of some of the negative comments
received then, I am repeating the questioned ideas.
At the birthday party for our university Chancellor, I said that the party was a Christian heresy. Birthdays coming around yearly assumes a circular view of history, while the Bible assumes a linear view with a beginning, an end, and purpose/goal. After a moment of thought, he answered that I didn't have to eat the cake.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you again, Dickson, on the last day of "your" year, the Year of the Ox, which as you know is the same as June's.
DeleteI assume that you made your comments somewhat tongue-in-cheek and that the response was equally lighthearted. But you properly emphasize the point I was trying to make in the article: "the Bible assumes a linear view with a beginning, an end, and purpose/goal."
As to birthdays, in a sense they do represent a type of circularity as they are based on the number of times the earth has circled around the sun, but they are also linear in the sense that we add a new number indicating the linear progression; thus, I move forward from 83 to 84 this year--and closer to the end of my life somewhere down the road. As I will be saying to Anton in response to his comment below, we humans do experience both circularity and linearity--but the latter, I believe, if of greater significance and, as you indicated, the Biblical worldview.
Here's wishing you,June and your entire Family the Best GOD offers in 2022 and Beyond!
ReplyDeleteJohn Tim Carr
Thanks, John Tim, and Happy Year of the Tiger to you, as that is "your" year the same as it is mine.
DeleteQuite honestly, I don't see the problem or the tension between a linear view and a circular view of history. They function differently. In some mystical sense, the Christian can say Christ is born again every year, just as Christ is resurrected again every year (or even everyday) in our lives. This is the wisdom of the church calendar. I wouldn't say that I'm particularly fond of the church calendar, but it makes spiritual sense. I would go a step further and suggest that, in fact, living as we humans do in our solar system and in history, both are rooted in human experience.
ReplyDeleteI would add that Ecclesiastes seems to reflect a circular view of life, although in the first chapter it's viewed as a bit bleak. But chapter three is the basis for a famous song, "Turn, Turn, Turn."
DeleteFor everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
Thanks, Anton, for your comments yesterday and then for adding comments about Ecclesiastes early this morning.
DeleteI certainly agree that we humans do experience both circularity and linearity. The question is, which is more important or the primary basis for our worldview? My contention is that the "Eastern" worldview has traditionally made nature primary whereas the "Western" worldview, based as it is on Christianity, primarily emphasizes history.
I mentioned that the linear worldview is that not only of Christianity but also of Judaism and Islam. Perhaps I should have also mentioned the quasi-religion of Marxism. I am currently reading the 2019 historical novel "The Women of Copper Country" by Mary Doria Russell. After posting this blog article, I read these words in that intriguing book: "Communists believe that history is a river that carries mankind to a utopia: a golden age of liberté, égalité, fraternité" (p. 185). (I thought this was an interesting link of Marxism to the French Revolution that predated Marx.)
It is most interesting that the word "revolution" has two quite different meanings. According to Merriam-Webster, the first meaning is "the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course." This is the circular revolution experienced in nature.
The second definition is, "a sudden, radical, or complete change." This is the linear revolution sometimes experienced in history."
It seems to me that traditionally, Eastern societies (such as China) with the emphasis on circularity have been most interested in maintaining the existing order in repetitive cycles (such as by an imperial system and the preservation of a society with little to no social mobility). By contrast, Western societies have been characterized by smaller and greater revolutions in the latter sense. The American Revolution, French Revolution, Russian Revolution are all based on the desire for change from the repetition of the established order with the goal of forming a better society. In Christianity, this, I believe, is the vision of the Kingdom of God, which I understand is seeking God's will on earth. I don't see any way the core of the political revolutions of the past centuries or the Kingdom of God can be understood from the standpoint of circularity. And that is why perhaps the most disruptive revolution of recent centuries was the Chinese (Maoist) Revolution, as that was a clash between the traditional circular worldview of imperial China and the linear worldview of Marxism.
Here are pertinent comments by local Thinking Friend Marilyn Peot:
ReplyDelete"As to the Church Cycle. I never got stuck with the 'coming of Baby Jesus' and I look forward to celebrating the desert experience of Lent. Advent is reminding me that Christ continues to be born in our spirits to the degree we are open and responsive and attentive. It also reminds me to anticipate that moment of death when the Eternal Birth takes place. 'Come, Lord Jesus, come.'
"Lenten's Desert for me is just that: a time to be open to and walking with the Abiding Presence: the Indwelling Presence...making sure it is a time of 'retreat' and focus on solitude and silence and living into stillness. I observe Holy Week as recalling the 'die and become' cycle we all live into. For me there is a recognition of the Paschal Mystery into which we live...and a realization there is always the Rising after the Dying in our cycle of Life.
"I reverence the words of the author Sebastian who reassures us that Jesus Christ came to show us how to live and the deep pain we cause each other...even unto death. But his rising only reinforces the ultimate new creation that is also starting here in every moment of our lives.
Anyway, that is the invitation, right?
I think life is a multidimensional fractal drifting through space of increasing entropy.
ReplyDelete... (If you don't understand, that's the point.)
Thanks, Clif. And I get your point, I think. I don't understand much at all about "fractal" and only a little more about "entropy" -- but both of those terms seem much more expressive of a linear worldview than a circular one.
ReplyDeleteI was happy to receive the following comments on Facebook (after I linked to my blog post there) from Thinking Friend Brenda Seat (my daughter-in-law) in Maryland:
ReplyDelete"I think your linear/circularity dichotomy is a false one. I have always viewed our existence- both our physical and our emotional one as being a spiral. It is neither a straight line advancing inexorably forward or a flat circular plane where we retrace our steps ad infinitude. Instead we advance in a spiral. We revisit the things we need to revisit until we learn the lessons we need to learn, but because each time we advance or are changed by the previous encounter we do not encounter that situation in exactly the same way. I think we can see this in history. Karen Armstrong gives a strong argument for this spiral way of looking at existence in her book, 'The Great Transformation'."
Brenda, thanks for posting these important comments; they are well taken. I agree that the spiral image is much nearer to reality than any straight line. But I contend that a spiral is far more like a straight line than it is to a circle. The end of a spiral is far from the point at which it began, so that shows "progress" or "development" in spite of the ups and downs. A circle is only repetition with the endpoint of a drawn circle being the same as the starting point.
DeleteTo go back to the dichotomy of nature and history, the earth does not go around the sun in a spiral, but a circle. But in the course of human history through the millennia, there has been, I believe, considerable change in the process: growth, development, progress, etc. But, and I see this as the important point you are making, that growth etc. has been much more like a spiral than a straight line.
Here are comments from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago, which came in an email before Clif posted his comments above. These comments, I assume, are especially for people with a good understanding of physics:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for sharing your views of time. According to modern physics, time is linear, although it is also relative. And in a closed thermodynamic system where thermal equilibrium has been established (maximum entropy), time ceases altogether since time is measured by energy flows."
Thanks for your comments, Eric. My views of time are based on what I learned in seminary from another Eric, Dr. Eric Rust, an Englishman who had a degree in science before he became a trained theologian and Christian philosopher.
DeleteAnd here are comments in a different vein from Thinking Friend Virginia Belk in New Mexico.
ReplyDelete"Happy Julian Calendar new year of 2022! Since my introduction to the Asian calendar was through Chinese friends, I will wait until the Second new moon after Winter Solstice to wish you Happy Lunar New Year.
"You posed some interesting questions about the church calendar, about which I will ponder."
I was happy to receive the following comments from Thinking Friend Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson, a retired Lutheran pastor in Canada.
ReplyDelete"Happy New Year, Leroy. I do appreciate your blog and hope you will continue with it.
"Regarding this blog post, I find the church year rendering of time quite helpful. I lament when people want to sing Christmas carols during the season of Advent. The theological motifs in Advent hymns are quite inspiring and set the mood for the season."
Thanks, Garth, for your comments. I am always happy to have people express views different from my own. It seems to me that following the liturgical church year is probably more meaningful to and a lot easier to affirm by those who grew up with that type of worship. Marilyn, whose positive views of Advent/Lent are posted above, is a lifelong Catholic, and I assume you have been a lifelong Lutheran. If you have always observed the church year, naturally it would seem the right and meaningful thing to do.
DeleteAlthough in recent years the churches I have been a member of did mostly follow the liturgical church calendar, from my boyhood until I became a pastor while still in college, the churches did not follow church year, nor did the churches I was pastor of in the ten years before we went to Japan. And all of my experience was singing Christmas carols in the worship services in all the Sundays from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I didn't know what Advent hymns were. Perhaps because of that past experience, I have never found Advent and Lent particularly meaningful, although I have gone through the motions of reading appropriate biblical and devotional literature during those times. And I still contend that the biblical view of time is linear rather than cyclical. -- Well, there is much more I could say here, but perhaps this is enough for now.
Well, Leroy, I had it all figured out what I was going to say, but I read through the comments before posting and discovered your daughter-in-law had beat me to the punch. So, as my plan spiraled out of control, I had to regroup and think of something new to say!
ReplyDeleteAs a young tiger, I will be 72 this year, but if anyone wants to guess 60, that's all right! I have long since reached the point where one birthday looks much like another, but my grandchildren teach me a different lesson. Last fall they turned 4 and 2, and a lot changed from 3 and 1 the year before. Living through the seasons as they aged that year made a difference in how they experienced the world. I was born in the spring, so I had a somewhat different experience all those years ago. Indeed, if one looks at a spiral collapsed onto a piece of paper it is a sine wave from the side and a circle from the end. Seeing the straight line down the middle takes some imagination.
I remember on one visit to my grandchildren my grandson piped up as we approached his church, "This is Aunt Amy's house!" Well, she was on staff there, so in a way it was. When I told the pastor what he had said, she confessed her own child thought it was the pastor's house. Neither child had yet grasped the concept of God's house. We must live the spiral before we can conceive the center, before we can even care about the center.
The double-helix of our DNA is a type of spiral. The spiral cannot get much deeper into us than that. Still, all these mathematical conceptions are just that, abstractions we use to try to make sense of our universe. Betty White's 100th birthday recently made the news because she died just weeks before reaching it. For her, the line, the spiral, and the circle all came to an end. If we look carefully enough, every loop of the spiral is changing. In my house, perhaps the major change of 2021 was Becky retiring from the last paid job either of us held. In 2022 we hope the major change will be getting our house ready to sell, so we can move to live with our daughter, who has invited us to join her in Portland, Oregon. That, of course, may not be the actual major change come 2023. If we make it to January 1, 2023 then we can think about it.
Thanks, as always, for posting meaningful comments, Craig.
DeleteIt is going to be sad for me when you no longer live up Canterbury Lane from us as I think about you nearly every time I drive (or ride my bicycle) by your house. But I am grateful that thanks to cyberspace there will, I assume, be no break in our communication (after, perhaps, a brief lapse during your time of transition, which I hope will go smoothly).
Here are further comments from Brenda (see above):
ReplyDelete"I would agree with Craig and his examples are quite enlightening.
"The spiral give us the opportunity to reengage and renew our understandings of things as we grow older and/or our life experiences allow for us to see things more deeply.
"I am not sure if you have read Thomas Cahill’s book 'The Gift of the Jews.' In that he talks about the how the Jewish traditions began to see the world in linear terms while living in a word that believed in the wheel of time or a circular way of living. So the linear and circular lived side by side for a long time and continued to do so long after Jesus.
"I think early Christians took both the linear approach of the Jews AND the circular and combined them in later years into the seasons of the church and then into the liturgical year. I never understood the liturgical year concept but as I have lived into it a Seekers and now as part of the group that plans our worship I have begun to appreciate the repetition of these seasons and the liturgical understandings that come with them. Every Advent we await the birth of Love into the world knowing that Love is already present with us. We go through Lent aware of our failings, and the Love that came to make us whole. We know this has already happened and yet we make the journey to Easter again. Easter is filled with joy and we sing alleluia again, even though we know these events happened more than 2,000 years ago and yet they are current and present with us now. In this way the circular and the linear aspects of time are merged and we see the spiral more clearly and it merges past and present into the now.
"We need signposts so that we can recognize when things have shifted by growing older and understanding more. With birthdays, anniversaries, going back to visit familiar people and places we both mark time and know it is passing but we are also acknowledging what has remained of the past and bringing it into the now. The liturgical year does this in a religious sense as well."
Thanks so much, Brenda, for your further helpful comments--and thanks for introducing me to a book I did not know about.
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