The Janus Weakness

April 20, 1986
Lakeland

You may consider this a peculiar time of year to be stimulated by the myth of the Roman god, Janus. Janus is shown on the old Roman coins with a double profile, facing opposite ways. Janus is a favorite starter for New Year’s sermons – look back on the old, look forward to the new. I am not so confused to think that it is January when it is April. After all, the Romans honored Janus not only on the first day of the New Year, but on the first day of each month. This is neither the first day of the year, nor the first day of the month. Nevertheless, Janus and what I term the “Janus weakness” is my subject today. By the “Janus weakness” I contend that looking backward with anger, regret, or satisfaction and looking forward with anticipation, dread, or hope are not enough. Such thoughts and emotions are both natural and inevitable, but the present time, the present moment is where [we] live, feel, and have our being.

When I speak of time, I am not referring to the time concepts of advanced physicists and their quanta theories, where time is not an absolute sequence, but [instead one that has] dimensions [of ] ... space and the behavior of microscopic particles charged with electricity, [and which exhibits] behavior that is affected both by the scientific observer and by what the scientist seeks to observe. Quanta theories will always be a mystery to me. Long before the 20th century physicists, essayist Charles Lamb wrote, “Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.” To a considerable degree, I share Lamb’s feeling about time and space in quanta theories.

Time, for me, is my experience of a particular coming into being every moment, replacing the previous moment, and instantly replaced by a successor movement of time. [CJW note: digital watch – emphasizes when the seconds change] Not mathematical time, but the human sequential time, we name the past, the present, and the future.

There is an acknowledgment I make to you. In books telling preachers how to preach, there is mentioned the “confessional sermon” where the preacher shares with the congregation “where he’s at” in our ungrammatical, but seemingly acceptable, English. What I am sharing is the product of pessimistic moods as well as what I might call a saving grace, which for me helps turn the “Janus weakness” into strength. That saving grace was poetically disclosed in Walt Whitman’s “Miracles.”

Somewhere I picked up the story of a “shipwrecked sailor who had spent three years on a desert island, who was overjoyed to see a ship drop anchor. A small boat came ashore and an officer handed the sailor a bunch of newspapers. ‘The captain suggests that you read what’s going on in the world, and then let us know if you want to be rescued.’”

I resonate with that. The newspapers and the TV and radio media are overwhelming us with sad and doleful news. Just a couple of days ago, a 17-year-old student committed suicide on a closed circuit TV show at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. At the conclusion of a program of protest against college policies, Andrew Hermann declared, “Now I’m going to join my brothers and drink cyanide-impregnated Kool-Aid.” He did, and he died.

The media have uses most air and print space on the U.S. attack of Libya, designed to make the Libyans stop terrorist acts, although the effect seems to be that terrorist acts are increasing and will continue. [CJW note: With so many persons canceling overseas plans, it seems that we are becoming captives in our own country, although we are the most powerful nation on earth.] There is less hope under present conditions and tensions that nuclear escalation can be halted or limited, let alone reduced. The Central America story and the U.S. part in it is both foolish and dangerous, but the “March of Folly” continues.

Sometimes in my dark moods I think that this world is inhabited by unsupervised children whose toys are dynamite cars, matches, toxic poisons, and venomous snakes. The Tinker Toys are buttons which will explode nuclear bombs, heat-seeking missiles, and other playthings for disaster.

Thus the temptation, some have, who love history and biography, to look steadily backward like Janus – look at the past with nostalgia, amusement, reverence, anger, or to understand. That can be a pre-occupation that enables a forgetting, a neglect of (escape from?) the present.

The most avid learner of the past is lost if he stays there. Edward Arlington Robinson seized that reality with the poet’s grasp. Recall two of the several stanzas:

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
he dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors....

Miniver Cheevy, born too late.
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate
And kept on drinking.

There are some of us, at least I’m one, who have had to wrestle with the inner demons that conquered Miniver Cheevy. Edward Arlington Robinson had a poet’s understanding of disillusioned men, not only Miniver Cheevy, but Richard Cory and Bewick Finzer.

The Janus look backward is a necessity to understand the vices of power, greed, weakness, and the strength, goodness, and sharing that are also the human heritage. Our Jacobs may wrestle not with angels, but an addiction, and many win. Our Samsons may not be massively muscled enough to pull down a temple with brute strength, but may have unsteady fingers on buttons that can launch nuclear missiles. Delilah may wear a Paris gown, and Judas is a cocaine dealer. The hungry do not find manna, god-given in the wilderness, but some at least are fed by nations and peoples who are not unhappy to dispose of surplus grain and corn.

The old Romans ascribed to Janus a role in the creation of the world and the promoter of human initiative. The look backward is not a closed retreat, but a way of understanding.

Janus looked forward, too. His insignia was the key which opens and closes the door. The key to the future involves foresight, planning, hope and persistence. Goals, aims, ideals are necessities to us conscious beings. Life’s line is what went before and stretches to the future.

The Tragedy of life

It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled. It is a calamity not to dream.
It is not a disaster to not be able to capture your ideal. It is a disaster to have no ideal to capture.
It is not a disgrace to not reach the stars. It is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for.
Not failure, but low aim, is sin.

Dr. Benjamin E. Hooks.
Published in Community News

Of course, we must look to the future in our fellowship, with our dreams of a larger house for greater congregation. In our individual lives, we look to the future and plan for our children, our homes, our medical well-being, our financial security, our preparations to become better professionals, better carpenters, better computer experts, [and] seek more rewarding careers. Who can live without hope? But dreams of the future and neglect of the practicality of the present is the other side of the Miniver Cheevy coin.

At times we sing to the hymn tune, “Truro” - I have not chosen for some time; early in my ministry, I wore it out.

THESE THINGS SHALL BE
Tune: Truro

These things shall be, -- a loftier race
Than e’er the world hath known shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of knowledge in their eyes.

They shall be gentle, brave, and strong
To spill no drop of blood, but dare
All that may plant man’s lordship firm
On earth, and fire, and sea, and air.

They shall be simple in their homes,
And splendid in their public ways,
Filling the mansions of the state
With music and with hymns of praise.

Nation with nation, land with land,
Unarmed shall live as comrades free;
In every heart and brain shall throb
The pulse of one fraternity.

New arts shall bloom of the loftier mould,
And mightier music thrill the skies,
And every life shall be a song
When all the earth is paradise.

Beautiful idealism, genuine world-wide human concern, a world of peace with nations unarmed, and all the earth [a] paradise.

But many today would scoff at these words written by John Addington Symonds in 1880 – a time when progress onward and upward seemed a fair prediction of things to come. Empty-headed, vaporous dreaming, ignorance of the vices of power and greed, would be the way many would view those words today, because omitted is how we can get to that earthly paradise. There is an unerasable “given” in today’s world of contentious conflict and national rivalries. It will be a long, painful, difficult, [and] frustrating task to begin to achieve even a measure of such a wonderful world.

The Janus weakness is that there is no profile pointed at the present moment. That is where we are on life’s line. Memories are pleasure and pain, the future is laced with hope and fear, but the present is where we are and always will be. Do we treasure the moment enough? With all our hang-ups, difficulty and pain, do we value this day, this hour, this moment? Another quaint story I came across goes like this:

A lady who was an incurable grumbler complained about everything and everybody. But, alas, the minister thought he had found something which she could make no complaint. The old lady’s crop of potatoes was certainly the finest for miles around. “Ah, for once you must be pleased,” he said with a beaming smile as he met her in the village street. “Everyone is saying how splendid your potatoes are this year.” The old lady glared at him as she answered, “They are not so bad, but where are the rotten ones for the pigs?”

I have met persons like that grumbling old lady. More than that, I have grumbled when there was more cause to rejoice in the world and be glad in it. Perhaps, some of you, too, will find the coat fits at times. The Janus weakness is to embrace insufficiently the present moment, even when there is bad news as well as good news.

We have survived to this hour. If granted more present days, we may have to revise our opinions from time to time on what is good, true, and beautiful. We Unitarian Universalists have as one of our principles, “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” The search is in the never-ending NOW. The search will disclose necessary revisions. Quite appealing to me is an inscription that a geologist writing in the New Yorker (3/3/86) found over a doorway in a German Officer’s school. Rendered in English, the axiom is “Say not ‘This is the truth’ but ‘so it seems to me to be as I now see things I think I see.’” Such to me is wisdom.

Such to me is the world and the beloved persons that when I am both wise and aware I encounter in the never-ending now. Did you see “The Family Circus” cartoon a couple weeks ago? Billy, at the window, says, “I see trees and grass and birds and clouds and sky...” Dolly replies, “I see smears and fingerprints and flyspecks and dust...” Billy retorts, “Windows are for lookin’ THROUGH, Dolly, not AT!”

We are not in Paradise – no one ever was – but we can help overcome the Janus weakness of insufficient appreciation of the now when we see through the smears, fingerprints, flyspecks, and dust to the lovelier scene beyond.

The Romans believed Janus had another power – his two faces allowed him to observe both the interior and exterior of the house: symbolically perhaps, our inner feelings and exterior world. It is wisdom to recognize that the smears, fingerprints, flyspecks, and dust of our own fears and follies may blur the vista of wonders beyond ourselves. The present is a gift to be cherished beyond memories and future promises. My conclusion and summary is that scripture from the Sanskrit found in our blue hymn book – that scripture for me is the saving grace when downcast by the follies and fears in our human enterprise.

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course, be all the verities
and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well-lived, makes every
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.