A Message of Hope for the New Year from Rev. Briere

Nowhere to Go but Up
by the Rev. Jeff Briere

I have not lived a hardscrabble life. I have secured good jobs, and bought nice homes. But I have been fired, laid off and unemployed. I have been left behind and I have been unable to see a way ahead. I have been lonely and scared. But looking back, I certainly had it easier than some. I am grateful for that.

However, 2020 has been the hardest year of my life, no doubt. Worse than Vietnam. Worse than my first girlfriend ditching me, which at that time, was the worst thing that happened to me in my 19 years of life.

My busted knee and the pandemic and the situation in our nation’s capital depressed me far beyond how much I thought I could be depressed. I was brought low this year. I wonder if your flight path dipped as well.

But I didn’t crash and here I am, on the cusp of 2021. And here you are. We are here right now, you and I. And right over there is 2021, another year. Another 365 days. Another chance to get it right.

We certainly won’t forget 2020, but I hope we can disregard it, or put it on the back burner, or perhaps, just look at 2020 with a more sanguine vision than we have now. We must learn from 2020 in order to get it right in 2021.

At least that’s the mindset I have now and I hope it will push me through 2021. I have the same hope for you. The hope I have is bolstered by the solstice, which is the point at which the sun rests for a day at its lowest place in the sky. Then, as it does every year, on December 22nd , it begins its ascent from its nadir to the highest point in its life.

Today, as I write this on December 22nd, the sun has nowhere to go but up. And the same is true for us.

We have nowhere to go but up. We are not condemned to a life in this current time. We live in the here and the now, but we are not constrained to live tomorrow as we do today. We can live better and stronger. We will live out of the here and the now and into our future, which, I must assume, will be better, and more fruitful than this dark time allows.

I hope to see you when we reach our zenith.

I wish you all the best in 2021.