We count years as if each year is a physical location which must be traversed to being us to our destination and this causes us to ask the wrong question, namely how many more years or places need to be passed before we reach out destination? Nobody knows the answer because nobody knows what the destination is.
The right question is how many moral levels need to be traversed, not, “How many physical places? We aren’t on a physical journey, we’re on a spiritual journey. The questions which need to be asked are:
How much more loving can we become towards our fellow man?
How much more tolerant can we become?
How much more patient can we become?
Unlike a physical destination, where you see a sign “Welcome to such and such a place”, a moral journey doesn’t have a final destination. There is always a higher moral level to reach.
The journey to a physical destination may have begun many years before 5785 years ago, as scientists tell us, and I believe them. The journey to a higher moral level began 5789 years ago.
5789 is a moral level from which to look back to consider how much more kind we were in the past year, how much more loving to our fellow man, how much more respect we showed our parents and teachers and so on.
All the moral situations we need to check on are listed in the prayer book for New Year. In those lists you won’t find questions relating to our physical situations, only questions relating to spiritual conditions.
Comments