It’s time to start a new year; but a “new year” is really an old figment of the imagination. The year 2005, like any other year, is something that exists only in the mind. It’s mainly an accounting convention. Today is hardly any different from yesterday. Despite the new year, it’s just another day.

However, one thing did set today apart for me. The weather here in the northeast was awfully nice. By mid-afternoon, the sun was shining and the temps were pushing 60. People were outside wandering about, as if it were mid-May. A sense of life was in the air.

But death has also been in the air for me lately. Of course, I’ve seen the reports about the terrible tragedy in south Asia where that killer wave hit unexpectedly. Over 100,000 dead, homes and villages washed away. Nature shows once again just how powerful and fickle it can be, despite humankind’s impression that we’ve tamed it, that it’s our kind and gentle friend.

Closer to home, my last living aunt passed away two days ago, at the age of 84. She died more-or-less peacefully after a life that was well lived. Her death, while sad, was not a tragedy at all. Still, for me it was another reminder of the inevitability of life’s decay and ending, the apparent victory of the darkness.

So we’re in a new year, but with the same old struggles between life and death. We face the same fears that death is the ultimate principal of our universe, and we entertain the same hopes that perhaps it is not. It’s as though we are perched on the edge of a fence. But actually, you can’t live your life on the fence. You either give in to one side or the other. “Faith”, in its truest sense, is the act of falling off the fence and onto the side of life. That sounds easy, but it means going the distance to act morally and kindly to everyone and everything that you encounter. Too often, I drift back into the backyard of death. Perhaps the idea of “new” in New Year can have some meaning after all, if it reminds us that it’s never too late to keep struggling to find our way back to the side of life and hope. Where we belong.