Each morning, come rain or shine, snow or sun my "spot" in the hot tub faces the tree. The tree is never the same from one day to the next; from one hour to the next. A magnolia tree drops a parade of paraphernalia. I used to think that trees shed in the fall. Trees shed something or other all the time! Living things change all the time.
The ancient Chinese spoke of a state of utter changelessness giving way to change—wuji through taiji to the constant interplay of yin and yang. In the Bible, a state of formlessness and void gave way to life at the command of God. The Big Bang gives us a state of concentrated something exploding into the countless changes of an ever expanding universe. These and other foundation myths give us a narrative framework for change, for why life is like it is.
A deep psychological need is for security. When we humans do not feel secure we become anxious and afraid. Living with constant change can make us feel insecure. We long for security, for something that doesn't change—something that remains the same; an anchor in the tossing of the waves.
One response, in an attempt to remove our insecurity, is to cling to things, to attach to things, to people, to events, to memories. Yet, if everything changes and we cling to the changeable in the hope that it will remain the same, our insecurity will be magnified. Better to roll with the changes. Better to give up on a false hope of security in changelessness.
My practice is to read the Sunday lectionary readings on my iPad. I have a wonderful app that automatically gives you the readings for each Sunday. It's very handy. I read the lectionary and then let my thoughts percolate. However, when I went back to the readings this week I realized that I had been percolating the wrong week! I had read the lectionary for June 30. I'm not quite sure how it happened as it is an automated process on the iPad. Not to worry, I would stay with the wrong reading, as an aphorism from it had stuck in my mind: "Let the dead bury their own dead."
Seems a bit harsh, perhaps uncaring. Not a pleasant thing to ponder. But, ponder I did as it would not go away. I am fond of the advice to wrestle with a text until the text unlocks a blessing. So I wrestled.
The aphorism spoke to me about change and a fearful clinging to the past.
Grief is about losing something or someone we are deeply attached to. When we lose a person, we externalize the grief in a funeral service. The service has a finality about it. It is a formal marking of change. Something major has changed and we set up a way-marker. At its best the funeral service helps us move on, recognize the change that has taken place, give thanks for that which we have lost, and roll with the change.
Many years ago I presided at the funeral of an elderly man (well into his eighties). His wife of sixty years—never a night apart they said in all those years until he died—seemed to do well. But a few months later I visited her. She was preparing dinner. I wondered at the amount she was making and guessed she had a visiter. Perhaps it was me? Had she made me dinner? But, as she set the table and placed the food carefully on two plates, I realized that she had made dinner for her husband, just as she had for those sixty years. She had not come to terms with the change. She had lived for those months after his death in denial—denial of the change; wanting things to remain the same.
Traditionally, theologians said that God never changes. In part this was derived from Greek thought that said perfection is a state of changelessness. If God, by definition is perfect, then God could not change. Another way of seeing is to say that as the universe is in process of becoming, and as God is intimately involved in the world, then God too is in process of becoming. God is in the changes.
Perhaps a life skill is to become as God becomes in the constant change that life brings, with no fearful clinging to the past, but rather an openness to God's future.
+Ab. Andy