Managing change is one of life's essential skills. Managing change well is crucial because life is always changing, always in process, never truly still. I write today from our camper in the foothills of northern Pennsylvania where this week the weather has brought us constant change, from hot sunshine to the deluge, from sunscreen to waterproofs, to magnificent rainbows. Life has brought us changes too. Jane had a nasty fall. She tripped on an uneven sidewalk in the picturesque town of Wellsboro—skinned knees and elbows, very sore ribs, still painful. Unrelatedly, I slipped into atrial fibrillation after a several years more-or-less absent. A few hours of irregular heartbeat leaves you exhausted and feeling like a damp dishcloth. Life’s changes.
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 G*d. 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 the way it is.
We all have a deep psychological need 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, to change the metaphor, an anchor in the tossing of the waves.
One response, 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. It's better to roll with the changes, to give up on a false hope of security in changelessness.
One of the sayings of Jesus is “Let the dead bury the dead.” The aphorism speaks 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 what 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 visitor. 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 G*d never changes. The ancient Greeks that said perfection is a state of changelessness. If G*d, by definition, is perfect, then G*d could not change. In the changes of life, cling to G*d, for G*d never changes. G*d is an anchor for the soul, the eye at the center of the storm.
Another way of seeing is to say that as the universe is in “process-of-becoming,” and as G*d is intimately involved in the universe, then G*d, too, is in “process-of-becoming.” G*d is in the changes. G*d in you manages the changes with you, which suggest to me an openness to G*d’s future whatever the changes may be.
In the end, the constancy we seek does not come from resisting change but from embracing it. As we sit under the ever-changing magnolia tree, or navigate the unpredictable weather of northern Pennsylvania, or recover from a fall, or adapt to irregular heartbeat, we learn to accept life’s inherent unpredictability. Embracing change, rather than fearing it, allows us to grow and adapt, finding security not in the unchanging but in our ability to navigate whatever comes our way.
+Ab. Andy