As the calendar year turns, our faith communities seem like they are running to just catch up from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts, both positive and negative. In this context, it makes more sense that I was asked recently to talk with worshipers where the numbers each Sunday at church had settled at around 15 people.

Perhaps we need more spaces in which to talk in confidence about this issue and how it has come about. We may also need to be ready for the “knock at the door” in case there is an opportunity for an expansion or a “widening of the circle.” Western Massachusetts is the land where dragons dwell, but in this case, there could be angels.

Some of our faith communities may have been helped indirectly by ARPA money, the COVID-19 federal relief program that has now been distributed. While this is a help, there is still great demand for services. There is food and housing insecurity, and a host of other social and spiritual concerns. The world, as Mary Piper says, is “pummeled with misfortune.” I think it is necessary for us to “cuddle up,” partnering in our towns and communities with other organizations to do good work, and/or to make “good trouble” as civil rights activist John Lewis once said.

But on the cusp of the new year, I’m still savoring the stories associated with the annunciation and a nativity: as Mary says to the angel Gabriel, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” As a recent article in the UCC magazine Sojourners said, “She’s not distrustful or unwelcoming of Gabriel, but she is thoughtful, and she does question the truths [s/he] proclaims so boldly. Even in the presence of God’s own messenger, Mary checks the facts. She questions, she listens, she learns. We would be wise to follow her example.”

Beyond our country, there is war in the Holy Land, which we help to fund with our taxes and that equally wrings out our hearts. I want to heal hurt on all sides, which may be impossible, but we can try to listen more deeply, and move forward somehow to less violence. War is not the answer, but the current war does not seem to be ending soon.

Its daily images have taken me in many directions but especially searching for maps of the area. I want to know what this corner of the world looked like during Jesus’s ministries and then at the time of his resurrection. Then there are the maps of Gaza, specifically; what did Gaza used to be called? (It had been a part of Egypt, then a Canaanite region, then a part of the Assyrian empire, and more recently, an area known as the land of the Philistines). I’m still shaking my head at the maps of the British Mandate, while fiercely wanting a promised land for Jewish people. I come across a strange map in French of the Mediterranean Sea turned on its side (available at bit.ly/3tBlf32) that has the effect of reducing the distance between Africa and Europe. If one superimposes on this map the promised Jewish homeland, it still offers a different, perhaps otherworldly, perspective on the Middle East.

Israel’s war with Hamas, triggered by the events of Oct. 7, on Simchat Torah (a significant Jewish holiday that celebrates the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings and the beginning of a new cycle), has had the effect this past year of turning a minor Jewish event (Hanukkah) into a major holiday on a par with Passover (kidding but not kidding). I have appreciated its hold on me, and yet, I have been wondering simultaneously how it feels to be an observant Muslim now in Franklin County.

I want to surround the Muslim community and Muslims I know with safe and loving arms, along with my Jewish friends and family. It’s not easy to practice one’s religion “out loud’’ at this supercharged time.

At the same time, I struggle to handle the stories of this war that goes back in time in terms of its causes for several decades. Humanity has many different faces when it comes to faith, but surely we can share one heart and find a way through to peace.

As always at this season, some of us look, Janus-like, both behind and ahead, thinking of and imagining what the new year will bring and what the legacy of the old might be. With you, I look back, and forward, but it was last September when I perceived the real turn of the year. With the birth of every child at this time of year, we have the chance to love more, fear more, hope more. And without hope, where would we be?

May all beings be peace-filled. Peace, Salaam, Shalom. Deep Peace be with you. For a lasting peace — and cease-fire — will ease the future of our sacred Earth.

Hetty Startup is on the leadership team of the Interfaith Council of Franklin County and a deacon at First Congregational Church of Ashfield/UCC.