A couple weeks ago I heard the news that a grocery store in my neighborhood was closing. But it was not going to be until early February and so I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Plenty of time later to deal with it. Now maybe here I should make a confession about why I like this grocery store—they have really good donuts. And since it is not far from the place where I take my yoga class each week, well, I’ve learned that combo—yoga and donuts—that it is a good pairing. It’s important, after all, for virtue to have its limits.

So last Friday when I stopped by the store, I wasn’t especially expecting much change. I expected that things would pretty much be the way they have always been. But indeed as I entered it was quickly clear that the closing part was very much in process. The produce section was almost empty. Most everything else in the store is being discounted. The place that was was no longer. I’m happy to report that they are still selling donuts, so that made all this a little easier. But still, the store that has been is no longer there.

One more change.

Change, of course, is the one constant in our lives. The old cliché about change being the one thing we can count on is really true. We may even know all those things that help us to live with change, but depending on the thing that’s changing, we might or might not do very well with it.

Transition is our spiritual theme this month. Last week Bill Sinkford talked about chaos and how its very name lets us know just how little we have control over. Today I’d like to talk about what we do know and how we make our way through change and transition.

So we know that change is constant. And we know that it happens in all kinds of ways. There are the big changes: new job, new community, new child, new partner, loss of someone important, illness, you name it. But then there are all the things we deal with that don’t necessarily happen in a moment: the reality of getting older, our children and maybe our grandchildren getting older, some gradual change in a relationship. There are changes at work, changes in our community and in our state and in our world. There can even be changes that happen at our church.

And there can be all kinds of layers to it. Take the grocery store closing for example. Now I know in the grand scheme of things a store closing may not be all that big a deal. But then there are the relationships we come to have in our lives. Sometimes the people at the grocery store can come to be important people for us.

And something like a store closing can remind us of all the other change happening around us. When I think about the location of the store that’s closing I wonder what will go in its place. Another store, maybe, but it might also be another huge apartment complex and what will all that mean for parking and for traffic. We are living at a time when it seems like so much is changing in our community. We live in a time where it feels as if it is a lot more difficult to afford being here. That is certainly a crisis for those who don’t have housing, and even for those of us who are privileged to have housing, will that continue to be the case or might we, too, not have homes at some point? There is a kind of existential angst that can come with all of that. A grocery store closing suddenly feels like more than a grocery store closing.

Now I think we each have our particular ways of dealing with change and our way may be very different than the person next to us.

Some people seem poised for what is next. They can’t seem to wait for what is new. They seem to be ready to rearrange the furniture all the time, they are ready to see what might be coming around the corner. And when it comes they are ready to deal with it.

For others, any kind of change is something to be resisted for as long as possible. It may even throw their whole world into chaos. Their routine has been upset and it is going to take them a long time to adjust. Even with time to plan, change is going to be anything but easy. They are going to resist as long as possible.

No matter where we might be on that spectrum, there are actually some predictable steps in the process—we each just go through them in our own way. First of all something ends or you see that something is going to end—a job, a relationship, a chapter in our lives, someone we love died, you name it. And the final stage is getting to something new. And in between those two comes what is more often the tough one, the middle stage. It is sometimes called the desert period and it isn’t always a comfortable place. There’s a gap between where we are and where we hope to be. We are no longer in one world but we may not be in the new place yet and the in between place is where the discomfort comes in.

William Bridges is the foremost writer on the subject of change and transition. He’s the one who are best articulated through the years some of the stages that we think of when it comes to transition, that beginning, middle and end stages.

He points to a paradox in life: the very things we now wish that we could hold onto and keep safe from change were themselves originally produced by changes. And many of those changes, in their day, looked just as daunting as any in the present do. No matter how solid and comfortable and necessary the status quo feels today, it was once new, untried and uncomfortable. Change is not only the path ahead, but it is also the path behind us, the one which we traveled along to wherever we are now trying to stay.

Now Bridges will point out that in his experience it is not necessarily the change we have as hard a time with as the transition, finding our way from one reality to another. That is where we can feel the most lost. Transition, he says, is the process of letting go of the way things used to be and then taking hold of the way they subsequently become. In between those two is that neutral zone, what some call the desert, where we make our way from one place to another.

The middle place is hard. We may not know what is coming next and we may not be ready to leave what has been. We want our lives to be settled and stable, but of course that isn’t always the case. We can’t know what the future will bring, and are asked to live in that space of unknowing, open to what will be coming. People who have lived with cancer have told me it is not always the news of the diagnosis that is hard as the period of waiting to know what the diagnosis will be. Once there is a diagnosis, they can make a plan and move forward from there.

Living in the place of change and chaos calls us to be open to what that time will bring. We are asked to honor what has been, but not to cling to it and to be open to where we will be in the next step. We are asked to let go of our ego, to let go of our expectations about what the future will hold. We are asked to listen and to be patient. We are asked to simply look and to pay attention to what is in front of us. We are asked to see what is emerging. We are asked to not to too attached to any particular outcome.

You’ve probably heard the story of the Chinese farmer and his son. They go into the mountains looking for wood when they find a stallion and capture it. They take it home and the whole village comes to see the wonderful horse. The people of the village congratulate the farmer on his good fortune but the farmer will only say, “maybe good fortune, maybe not.”

One night the stallion escapes. The people of the village all come to console the farmer on his misfortune. Again the farmer only answers, “maybe bad fortune maybe not.”

A few days later the horse returns with many other horses. The poor farmer now has many horses. The villagers come by and praise him on his good fortune. But the farmer will only answer, “maybe good fortune maybe not.”

Later that month, the farmer and his son are breaking the horses when one of them throws the son. His arm is broken and he can’t work the horses. He might not be able to work the horses for the rest of the season and the farmer can’t do it himself. The people of the village come and offer condolences on the farmer’s bad fortune. The farmer answers, “maybe bad fortune maybe not.”

A few weeks later the Emperor’s solders come to the village conscripting the young men of the village. The Emperor is raising an army for a great campaign. The farmer’s son is passed over because of the broken arm. The villagers come to the farmer to share his good fortune. But the farmer will only say, “maybe good fortune, maybe not.”

We can always count on change in our lives, we can’t always know what will be good fortune and what will not be good fortune when we can see any given event with some perspective. Staying in that place of openness—of not knowing for sure what the outcome will be—that asks much of us. It asks a kind of faith that whatever it is, it will be all right. Some of us can look back on a given situation that, with time and perspective can look very different than it did at a time when it was all getting sorted out.

We are living in times that can feel particularly unsettled. It seems like every day some new challenge surfaces and we are left wanting to sort out truth from lie, hype versus reality.

And sometimes we find ourselves lost. It may not be at all clear what the way forward looks like. And in these times especially it is easy to want to respond with cynicism and despair, or perhaps to simply withdraw.

It may be that we feel alone amid all the change that is happening and we don’t know where we will land. That is when we are most called to know who we are, where we stand, to know what is constant. To hear what the spirit is saying and to be open to what that voice within is calling us to do. It means that at times when our lives are most out of order, being able to trust that we are very much part of the larger order and that in that trust we will find our way and that we will not get lost.

It might be knowing the line between being aware of our own agency—where we have some control—and knowing where we need to let go, that we really aren’t in control. It is about knowing that place and living from there.

In that place, we can know fear, we can know despair. But it may also be where hints of possibility can emerge. This may be where we start to recognize the reality that is taking shape before us.

“In the darkness the eye learns to see,” said poet Theodore Roethke.

Waiting for the future to emerge, of course is not a solitary endeavor. It is something that each of us does in our lives in all kinds of ways. We have to show up and pay attention and hope that we can see it or hear it, to be open to what will come our way next. And sometimes it does.

Writer Victoria Safford, a Unitarian Universalist minister, tells the story of a man who was in a bad place. His partner of many years was leaving him, his four teenage children, whom he’s loved and held all this time had all but stopped speaking him. He was a baker and an artist and his business was in tatters. Life was not going well for him at all. He asked the writer, “Did you know that dis-aster literally means falling star?”

Well one night, in the midst of all this change and turmoil in his life, he calls to tell about a note that somebody sent him. They weren’t at home, so he leaves a message: “Hey guys. Listen to this note that someone sent today: “Sir. You have saved my life with bread. Thank you. An old friend.””

Safford writes: “Our friend was silent for a long, long while. (We had a machine that allowed deep silences; it would not disconnect a caller lost momentarily in reverie or caught in contemplation.) Then came his voice again, asking, as if we could answer through the tape, “What do you think of that?” He was quiet, then said, “It makes me think of that old Ojibwe song, the “Song of the Bird”: “Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while the wind is bearing me across the sky.”

That was the whole message and apparently not long after that things started to go better for the man and his life, step by step, got back on track.

Words of Rilke:

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
It has its inner light, even from a distance –
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which hardly sensing, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave …
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

I’m struck that we are at that time of year when we make resolutions, or now, when we are already in the middle of January, looking at all the resolutions that have not come to pass. I’m struck by a kind of paradox—we want change but then it can be so easy to find ourselves back in the status quo.

It might be that we are being asked to resolve to know where our grounding is, to know who we are in a world that is so full of change. We are asked to resolve to know where those footholds are for each of us, those things that hold us steady. But we might also be asked to resolve, to know those things that propel us forward, those things that help us get out of our comfort zone, those things that lead us in the direction of justice, in the direction of love and mercy, those things that help us to recognize our interdependence, those things that help us to see of everything is related to everything else—most of all our own lives.

Change is constant. It may be unwanted. It may be irritating. It may be a welcome gift. In the midst of it all we may find ourselves in the desert, wandering. It is part of the unfolding creation that embraces us and moves through us. As we are changed so is the world, and as the world changes so do we. Justice, love, peace: they happen step by step in our lives. They are grounded in the knowing that a greater love will hold us even when we are afraid. It is up to us, most of all, to trust that the wind, all the while, will be bearing us across the sky. And we will, in the end, find our way home. Amen.

Prayer
Spirit of life and of love, give us courage for the journey. In all of our days help us to live fully in the midst of so much change, all the things that make life abundant and amazing. Through it all help us to make a space for the stirring of the heart. Help us to listen and to pay attention. Give us hope. Give us patience. Help us to be open to what love calls us to do in the world. Amen.

Benediction

Give yourself to life, as life gives itself to you, good people. Go this day in love and in hope. Amen.

Topics: Transition