“Change alone is unchanging.” That is wisdom from the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus.
Change alone is unchanging. In the words of our anthem by Ysaye Barnwell:
Cain’t no one know at sunrise, how this day is gonna end.”
We know that change is inevitable…always taking place within us…as our cells are replaced by the millions each day…
And around us…in our personal lives and in the world.
Some of that change has been…well…a real test for us, especially of late.
But whether you like the change we are dealing with or hate it, we know, at least intellectually, that change is constant…
And we are advocates for change…and impatient for it…we yearn for transition toward justice, greater equity and compassion.
And yet, we also want things to be predictable, knowable…controllable…
We want change but we also want to be in control. We want both/and.
We want a model of the universe that welcomes the new, the different, the creative…yet is not strange and does not make us feel uncomfortable.
How shall we approach this New Year?
Our spiritual theme for January is “Transition.” There are so many sermons to preach on that topic. Transitions as we age and move from stage to stage. The sometimes physical transitions around gender and gender identity. But also transitions of belief. Transitions in relationships. Endings. Beginnings. Even transitions beginning in Washington.
If change alone is unchanging, how we deal with transition and change…whether we resist it, or deny it…whether we try to control it, or embrace change and “go with the flow”…
These are spiritual issues.
So many sermons.
Certainly one of them is in the tension between control and the constancy of change itself…between predictability and randomness…between order and chaos.
Rev. Sarah York writes of a New Year’s encounter with that tension:
‘I looked out the window, surprised to see winter’s first snowfall. I wasn’t ready.
“Have you seen my boots anywhere?” I asked my husband Chuck, after I had searched for them in every logical location in the house.
Forty five minutes of climbing over boxes in the attic, (”Here’s the Christmas wrapping we couldn’t find last week”), rummaging through closets (“I’ve looked there twice already, but you can look anyway”), and sneezing into the dust under beds…yielded only frustration. No boots.
It was Chuck who finally found the boots. I had given up after six trips to the attic, two trips to the basement, and multiple closet checks. The terrible truth is that they were in the attic in a box labeled “Camping Equipment,” well hidden underneath a tent and a Coleman stove.’
Have any of you had a similar experience? Anyone?
Sarah goes on:
‘The fact is, we humans do not like to live in the kind of disorder where winter boots can get lost in a box of camping equipment. We are particularly uncomfortable when such disorder originates [at our own hands].
But there it is, the terrible truth—or half of it, anyway.
The other half is that once such a lapse of logic has taken place, a return to disorder is the only [solution]. It was only because Chuck could imagine the most illogical location for the boots that he could discover them.
…sometimes a return to chaos has its logic, too.’
Most of us have been there…searching in the same logical places over and over again…searching for something that we’ve put in a “safe place.” That is how we describe it in my house. “I put it in a safe place.”
Only moving outside logic can help at that point.
A return to chaos.
In the world of Heraclitus, Chaos was a God. Or, more specifically, Chaos was the primeval state of existence out of which the first gods appeared: Gaea(Earth), Tartarus(the Underworld) and Eros(Love) were all created out of Chaos: “the dark majesty and mystery of creation incarnate.”
In the Judeo-Christian tradition:
“…the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Genesis 1:2)
Chaos was what existed before God uttered that first phrase: “Let there be light.”
Chaos represented creation before…undifferentiated and uncontrolled…before human-kind…before “we” and our gods…took control and imposed our will on it.
But chaos is not just a description of the world before science created order and control.
In fact, chaos is enjoying renewed popularity…not in myth but in science, itself.
It is called “Chaos Theory.”
Are you familiar with the “Butterfly Effect.” The term was coined by Edward Lorenz, a scientist that was trying to predict weather patterns. He used the admittedly metaphorical example of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) being influenced by miniscule events…like the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.
He discovered this when he realized that his model of the weather produced dramatically different results if the initial data points were rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner… a change of a millionth part could change the outcome completely.
The butterfly effect is well established…there are Ted talks about it…and long equations describing it…
But it is a real test for western science…not to mention a test for our theology. Chaos Theory tests our model of the universe.
We believe that if you know all of the relevant variables, you can predict the outcomes of our actions. Right? We believe that.
Push here…this moves in response. Provide better nutrition…people live longer. Stop smoking…life expectancy goes up.
This is a model of the universe that is “deterministic.” That is the fancy term. A universe of cause and effect. An apple falls from the tree…to take the famous Isaac Newton example…gravity predictably pulls it to the ground. No butterfly wing flapping changes that trajectory…or does it.
Well, chaos theory says that some distant butterfly may have flapped its wings in a different direction…at a slightly different time…with different intensity…and a tornado may have stripped that apple off the tree and deposited it miles away…or a simple thunderstorm might have kept Sir Isaac indoors…
He might never have seen that apple fall. Then where would we be?
You get the point.
Some authors and some preachers have tried to use the butterfly effect to encourage specific actions and promise specific results.
If a butterfly flapping its wings can determine the timing of a tornado…
Well, just think what might happen if…just to pick something out of the air…we rode bicycles instead of driving cars, say…or even stopped using fossil fuels altogether…what if we treated our neighbors as ourselves…
This thinking supported the voluntary simplicity movement.
These are optimistic thoughts. But the Butterfly Effect does not work quite that directly. Because there are millions of butterflies and billions of other small, even miniscule events that affect a system as large as the climate.
And the same thing is true for systems as large as the human family.
So you can’t justify your individual actions because they will directly and predictably change the world…
Sorry.
But they will have an impact. It is just that the impact will be unpredictable. We can’t know…for certain…what the outcome will be.
This takes us into theology and our ideas about what is real and who is in charge and what meaning it all has.
Remember our friend Heraclitis. “Change alone is unchanging.”
Change, he believed, was the fundamental truth of life. “No [person] ever steps into the same river twice.” The universe, for him was in the process of becoming. He was, in fact, an early process theologian.
A universe in the process of becoming…well that should be pretty comfortable for religious liberals. We say revelation is not sealed. The future is not pre-determined.
And although we may not be in control, our decisions can have an impact. Our decisions can help shape our personal future and the future of our communities. We can help shape that future for the good.
That is the deterministic understanding…that cause and effect model…used in the service of building Beloved Community.
But isn’t there something beyond that deterministic understanding…something beyond the push-pull to ground us as we deal with transition and change? Something to help us deal with the chaos that sometimes even we create?
Perhaps there is something beyond the chaos. Something in the process of becoming that has in it more of spirit, more of mystery and more of hope.
When you are facing a juncture in your life, a period of transition and change, or an important decision, do you search for an answer by weighing all of your choices in a reasoned, rational way? Do you make lists of pro’s and con’s?
Or do you try to feel your way through it, seeking some sense of “rightness?” Do you wait for a decision to emerge for you…and in you.
Our Unitarian religious ancestors applauded that first, rational, reasoned approach. There is a joke that those early Unitarians thought they could “think their way into heaven.”
William Ellery Channing used the language of “self-culture”… continual self-improvement. The spiritual challenge for him was to move, constantly, toward human perfection. Perfection might never to be achieved…but…Likeness to God (the title of one of his most famous sermons),…Likeness to God was the objective.
“We can fix our eyes on perfection, and make almost everything speed towards it.” Channing wrote in that sermon.
We inherit that belief in our human agency…and in our perfectability… from our Unitarian religious ancestors.
In this view, we deal with chaos and uncertainty by the choices we make. The choices we make and the consequences of those choices…however those consequences may ripple out… like the results of those butterfly wings…
If there is a divine plan, it is discoverable…The Beloved Community is achievable.
So, rational planning and intention toward goals…that is in our religious DNA.
Our Universalist ancestors also took action to move themselves and our world toward the Beloved Community. But they used a very different language of discernment.
They spoke of god’s love calling them. A change of heart was the goal. They spoke of grace and a divine intention toward justice and love.
A “divine intention.”
Minister Lillie Nye describes this approach: “The universe is …unfolding a divine intention…and we are part of …its movement…we are its expression.”
In this view, each person’s life has a purpose within the larger unfolding. And it is possible for the individual “ to experience the divine as communicative, responsive and leading.” This understanding asks us to participate in the mystery.
This more mystical approach is there too in our liberal religious DNA.
The two ways of being…the planner and mystic…to say that they are in tension would be an understatement.
Yet they both live in most of us…often one approach more dominant…or more dominant at some times than at others.
We hold them both…or perhaps it would be better to say that they both help to hold us as we navigate transition and challenge and change.
So, how should we approach this New Year. Should we be ready to plan…have our excel spreadsheets up to date and our critical paths mapped out?
Or should we be waiting for some grace to happen and for the Spirit of Life to somehow point the way and call us to action?
I do not believe that it has to be either/or.
Because, for all of our planning, we are not in complete control. There are times when we need some grace.
And because grace comes not only when we wait but also when we act, we need to make choices that open the door to love.
Both/and.
What is certain is that change will come. We have not experienced the last of chaos…there is more ahead.
Perhaps, for us, the best questions are not about striving for control. Perhaps the best questions are about Integrity and Faithfulness.
We may not be able to control the change that is coming in our lives…though my bet is many of us will try…
What we can control…where we are in charge…is how true to our values…to our hopes and our dreams…we will be.
Faithfulness…that is an approach that can hold both of those models of the universe…both our agency and our trust.
This is why we talk of faith, and hope and love…every week.
Our model of the universe will not answer all of our questions and offers precious few guarantees…
But we can hold a model of the universe where faithfulness matters.
Because acting as if love is real…in fact makes love real in our lives and in our world. We know it does.
That is where the hope lies. And that is completely in our control.
“What shall we do with this great gift of Time, this year?
Let us begin by remembering that whatever justice, whatever peace and wholeness might bloom in our world this year,
We are the hearts and minds, the hands and feet, the embodiment of all the best visions of our people.
The new year can be new ground for the seeds of our dreams.”
May it be so.
Prayer
Will you pray with me?
Spirit of Life and of Love. God of promise and of paradox.
Be with us in this New Year. We know that we will be both challenged and blessed in the coming months. We will know both loss and gain. For us, life always calls for both grieving and celebration.
May we discover wells of courage and hope to see us through the losses.
And may we find good companions to join in our celebrations.
Control is not in our power, but our choices matter, like the wings of that butterfly.
May our choices add love to the equation.
And may we discover that we can live, not in chaos,
But in hope.
Amen
Topics: Transition