A few weeks ago I had my hearing checked because I had noticed a difference in how things sounded when I listened with my right ear versus how they sounded when I listened with my left ear.  To be more precise, when I had a phone to my right ear I could not hear the lower overtones as well as I could with my left ear.  As a musician, I really worried about having my hearing compromised, which would be a huge loss.

As it turned out my hearing is within normal range except that I have one frequency in the lower register that I can no longer hear with my right ear. The technician that gave me the test said that it is not unusual for people to have this kind of selective hearing loss but that it was a little unusual that someone would notice such a specific loss.  She said that musicians were more likely to notice this kind of loss than people who were not trained musicians.

When you are a college music major one of the things that are a part of your curriculum is “ear training.”  This is a combination of musical dictation, sight singing, and listening to musical excerpts, that helps you learn how to listen and what to listen for.  It is this intentional program of learning how to listen that helps musicians hear what they need to when they are performing so that they can make the many minute adjustments that contribute to an artful performance.

In a lot of ways, the life of faith has a lot in common with ear training.  Jesus once said that some “people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears.”  (Matthew 13:15, NRSV) It was his way of describing a certain kind of hardness of heart in which people ignored the people around them who were in need.  Contrariwise, he also commended others who had been trained to see with compassion by saying, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.”

Here’s the deal: we can train ourselves to see and hear the injustices around us or we can train ourselves to ignore them.  The saddest thing is not that we notice injustice and choose to ignore it (although that would be sad)  but that our senses have become  dulled to its presence.

Okay, I’ll admit that New Year’s Day has always been one of my least favorite holidays.  It generally involves drinking and crowds, two things about which I am not an enthusiast.  I have often spent New Year’s Eve at home with family celebrating in the least exciting way possible – often sleeping through the changing of the year from one to another.  In many ways, New Year’s is a contrived holiday, since the only reason one year changes to the next at that moment is because we say so.  The calender, while it is informed by our earth’s journey around the sun, is in many ways a figment of our imagination.

I do think, however, that the New Year’s celebration, in the way we understand it, is a pregnant moment.  It can be a time to reflect on the previous year and give thanks.  It can be a time to take inventory of the things for which we are grateful and to whisper our gratitude to the divine origin of our bounty.  In a world where time often whisks by without any significant reflection it is an opportunity to live into the eternal now by reflecting on where we have been and where we are heading.

Like many people, I have also had years to which I was more than happy to say goodbye.  These are the years that mark serious losses or setbacks.  While not wanting to wish away time it is nice to mark the finality of a season of despair and commit ourselves to a new season of hope and expectation.  Without the marking of the years there are no benchmarks for our expectations and we could drift endlessly through periods of grief without a passage into a new era.

The Bible talks about time in two ways.  Chronos is the passage of time in the common sense of the word.  Kairos is time in the sense of a moment of opportunity (often divine intervention).  It is the word that is used to say it is time to act.  Recognizing the changing of one year to another in the passage of time (chronos) calls us to recognize this as a moment of opportunity (kairos) to open ourselves to transformation and growth.

And so, while New Year’s Day may be one of the most secular of holidays for many people, it is also an opportunity to reflect and recommit.  There are many jokes made about the commitments that are made on New Year’s that drop by the wayside soon after.  But I also know of many people who have used this time of the year for serious evaluation of their values and commitments and who have made substantial alterations in their approach to life and loves.  Maybe this is can be an opportunity to live into the divine promise which states, “See, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:5)