What we shall be



"It hasn't yet appeared what we shall be ..."
The largest ever live streaming event on the internet is a twenty-four-hour-a-day stream of three baby eagles and their parents. Decorah Eagles
The camera is fixed on the nest and you simply watch the day to day activities of an eagle family. It didn't begin with three baby eagles. It began with three eggs. The little birds hatched and have grown ever so fast. Watching the egg break open and the scrawny little fledgling make its way into the world was amazing. Seeing the parents bring food, and how they lovingly care for their young is quite an insight into nurture. Unlikely as it seems, the eagles' nest is compulsive viewing.
A large part of the fascination is to watch the changes. We knew that the eggs, should they have survived, would become little birds. We knew that the little birds would become bigger birds and develop wings. As I write the major issue of change is when and how the little birds will take to flight. The eyrie is so high. The little eaglets are so small.  We await the change. The world is watching to see what will be. It has not yet appeared.
Life is becoming what we shall be. We do not remain the same for a single moment. Our interaction with our environment is constantly changing us. Even in the stillest moment there is movement and change. The process of physical change is unremitting as we breathe and eat and drink and become. The physical processes of change  reflect and interact with the spiritual processes of change. Spiritually all is flux, all is change.
Given the inexorable nature of change we have one of three choices: a) To ignore the changes, as if the changes are unimportant; b) to resist the changes, as if they are repugnant and must be fought; and c) to accept the changes and to work with them.
To ignore the changes is what most people do. Life is lived without intention, without focus, without center. Life is literally wasted.
To resist the changes is the second most popular option. I have often felt a sense of tragic irony when seeing a Hollywood star looking "young" from a distance when they ought to look "old." As the camera zooms you see the stretched skin, the false "youth," the pallid visage of the almost embalmed. Change is resisted at a terrible cost.
To accept the changes and work with them is the way of the spiritual adept.
To seek to understand change was the quest of the ancient Chinese sages. The world's most ancient book (though it is hardly a book in the traditional sense) is the Yi-Jing, the Book of Changes. The Yi-Jing contains ancient wisdom, added to over the centuries by commentaries and interpretations, and is the essence of all developed Chinese philosophy. At its heart is how to live in the best way with change, not yet knowing what we shall be, but working with change rather than resisting it.
The early Christians, too, had a profound sense of change. They lived with the changes of their teacher Jesus who in resurrection appears to them and is the Christ. They came to believe that the changes they had experienced in him would be changes they too would experience. There would be transformation into the likeness of the Christ. But it was not yet clear "what we shall be." For though the Christ has appeared, the Christ is yet to appear. Those who have this hope of change do not sit idly by. They work with the changes. They look toward the goal, for though "what we shall be has not yet appeared" there are glimpses. Those with this hope align themselves with the great transforming work and edge toward it.
Like the little eaglet, just now enjoying the tenderness and care of parental love in the safety of the nest, change is happening constantly. Soon the time will come to leave the nest and learn to fly. Better to prepare than not.