Ch, Ch, Ch, Changes

January 1^st, 2017

Rev. Laura Bogle

Reading:

The Way by Edwin Muir

Friend, I have lost the way.

__The way leads on.

Is there another way?

__The way is one.

I must retrace the track.

__It's lost and gone.

Back, I must travel back!

__None goes there, none.

Then I'll make here my place --

__The road runs on --

Stand still and set my face-

__The road leaps on.

Stay here, forever stay.

__None stays here, none.

I cannot find the way.

__The way leads on.

Oh, places I have passed!

_That journey's done.

And what will come at last?

__The way leads on.

This last week I’ve spent some time with my partner’s family up in Indiana.

It was cold up there!

One day we took the two year old twins for a walk, we bundled them up and we put their little knit mittens. And put them up on our backs and off we went.

Mittens on two year olds is a gamble if they aren’t somehow attached.  And sure enough when we got back to the house we realized that each one of them had lost one of their mittens somewhere along the way.  Mittens that their Meemaw, whose house we were staying at, had very lovingly knit just for them. Oh dear.

The day of our departure I decided that I’d go out and look along the road we had walked down, see if I could find those mittens.  And so I did.  It had snowed a tiny bit by then and I thought, those white mittens won’t stand out, I’ll never see them.  But I walked and I looked.

And just when I thought there’s no way I’d find them, there was one of them.  It gave me hope so I kept walking, and pretty soon there was the other one!  I was so proud and I brought them back to be reunited with their pair.

If only it were so easy to cope with other changes and loss in life.  To simply retrace our steps and go back to where we were, and all will be restored as it was. 

Finding the lost mittens helped me feel like I could in some way control the chaos and unpredictability of life.  You see, this week was also the first holiday time we spent in Indiana without my partner's beloved step-father, Papa to our girls, who died in May of this year.  We did some of the same things as we have always done at the holidays.  But nothing felt quite the same.  The underlying absence of this person changed it all.  It wasn’t just that we are sad that Roland is gone and miss him, which is of course very true.  Roland’s absence also has changed us.  

The family dynamic is different.  What we do together is different.  Our conversations are different without him. 

I don’t always deal quickly or easily with change, even really good changes.  It takes me time to adjust.  Usually I have to have a period of pretending things aren’t really that different, or a time of trying to make things stay the same.  That never feels very good, because it is not dealing with reality, and a tension builds—a tension between the way I wish things were and the way things actually are.  Being a parent of young children has challenged me more than anything else to pay attention to and accept change.  For instance, right now I really don’t want to admit that the twins are transitioning out of their daily afternoon nap.  Just like some of us really don’t want to admit that in about three weeks a different kind of transition will be happening in the White House.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says that “When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.”

“When we resist change, it’s called suffering.”

Pair that wisdom with the words of ancient Greek philosopher, Heraklietos,  “Change alone is unchanging.”  No wonder he was known as the weeping philosopher!

2017, like every year before it, promises change. That is all we can count on.  Perhaps 2017 promises even more change than other years.  It is a time of great instability and shifting ground in our world and our country.  We feel it in our hearts, in our families, in our communities. 

There are some changes ahead that I really, really, really don’t want to accept; that I don’t want to normalize. 

Today I want to remind us that accepting a change does not mean approving of it or normalizing it.  Accepting a change does not mean liking it, or staying silent about the pain it causes you.  Accepting a change does not mean letting it control you. 

This year I want to be challenged by Pema Chodron’s words to embrace groundlessness and relax into its dynamic quality.  A dynamic means there is a back and forth – that change does not just move in one direction.

We can predict some changes will come that we won’t like, that we wish weren’t happening, but more will follow.  Take heart in the lyrics of Sam Cooke—

“There been times that I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gon' come, oh yes it will”

Take heart in the lyrics of Bob Dylan:

“The slowest now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now will later be last
Cause the times they are a-changing “

We can count on the fact that there will be change. 

It is up to us, the human community, with the help of that Power which is greater than any one of us, to face the changes that come, to move forward through them and to nurture more change that brings new life and love into this world.

You are invited now to participate in our ritual of letting go and opening up for the new year.

What in your life would you like to release, to let go of, or to move towards acceptance of?  You are invited to write these on your piece of paper and then when you are ready come forward to release them into the bowl of water on the table.

Set one or two intentions:  What would you like to make more room for in this coming year?  What change would you like to nurture—either in yourself or in your community?  How will you open to the gifts of your life, even in times of great change?  You are invited to take a marker and write these directly on our table cloth here.  Words, pictures, and symbols all are fine. 

With serenity, we release what is written here into the service of health and growth in 2017.

The Way the Leads On

With courage, we set these intentions written here in the service of health and growth in 2017.

The Way Leads On