June 14, 2011

New Beginning

Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise
Everything in life is temporary. Everything has an end. Winter ends, snow melts, spring ends… But, as the old proverb goes, every end is a new beginning, and when spring ends summer starts. Or, if you prefer, as T.S. Eliot put it, “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from” (this is also wonderfully expressed in “East Coker,” the second of Four Quartets). Why am I telling you this? Well, I’m referring to someone both you and I know and who is about to make a big change in his life—he’s almost retired from his previous career as a teacher…—and thought we could wish him a happy ending and a bright new beginning. May God always guide and bless him!