Face Forward: Accepting the Future As It Unfolds - May 18, 2008

This Week’s Reflection

First this morning I want to tell you that in what I have to share with you today I will make mention a great deal of God. And so like in legal documents where key words are defined, I’d like to define, tell you what I mean, when I say God. It’s simply this, it’s love. To quote an early writer on things spiritual, “God is love.” We’ve moved into a new season of the year, Spring, a time when once again the seasons bring their unmistakable changes to us and when we celebrate these changes. And because it’s an election year we hear lots of talk of change also. There is excitement and celebration about the changes that the seasons and the elections are anticipated to bring. And with it all, all the changes going on and all the talk of change, we are reminded of the unavoidable reality of change in our lives.

A few short months ago millions of people around the country focused their attention as they do every year on a ball falling in Times Square, NY. And, as it fell, there were cheers and celebration for the new, for the change, which the new year represented.

I’ve often thought during these times of change how the celebration of change at New Years or at times of political change or at times when the seasons change stands in stark contrast to how we respond most of the time to the presence of change in our lives. In general, we don’t always welcome the newness that comes our way. And the certainty that this reality of change is not just a past experience but will continue to greet us along life’s path, this certainty, is not always a comforting one.

Yet, if there is anything that we can absolutely count on in the future, it is the certainty that things will change. In every community, you don’t have to travel far; you don’t have to knock on many doors to find the unmistakable indications that change has come calling, and in many cases unwanted and with fear and dread.

And boy is this ever true in our community, Journeys Community, just now. Change is not only knocking on our door, it’s coming right on in.

And, in this season where we can’t avoid giving consideration to the reality of change, where the season reminds us, where the political process reminds us, where life in this our special community reminds us, I want to think with you this morning about this reality, this given of life.

What the spiritual perspective says about change has served me well as I have been faced with change and as I try to keep myself ready to greet the certainty that change is part of the fabric of the life gift.

John Claypool, my seminary pastor knew something about change. You are not supposed to have to bury your children but while I was in seminary he and his wife suffered the loss of their beloved daughter. Over the years that followed her death, Claypool wrote a great deal about the subject of change and loss. In the times in my life when I have experienced some dreaded changes I’ve turned to my former pastor for the wisdom that his experiences gave him.

He mentioned in one of the things he wrote the renowned psychologist, Rudolph Dryfus, and how Dryfus had observed that throughout the world in countless cultures, among the first words that children learn are variations of the words good-bye and hello.

And, he said it is good that children learn these words, these constructs, early because no challenge in life is more perennial or profound than the challenge of learning how to greet the not yet experienced, and to say farewell to the already experienced.

Change is the one thing that doesn’t change. The fact that children recognize this early is yet another validation of the certainty that ours is an existence in which, moment to moment, we are constantly becoming either more or less of what we were just before. By design, this is how the mystery we call life, this gift, has been fashioned.

It’s not hard to understand why this certainty of change in our life experience is one we work hard to avoid. For all of our celebrating at Times Square, at political conventions and at other times of collective change, we frankly fear change. If we are given the choice, at least in relation to much in our lives, we’d just as soon have things remain the same. One of the quotes this morning said it well, ‘everything I have ever let go of has scratch marks on it.”

We are a little bit like the man who was the last person to be executed by hanging in Georgia. The law had changed and capital punishment would be administered in the future through the use of the electric chair. Some state official thought that this change merited a ceremony and so one was held just before this last unfortunate man was to be the last to be executed by hanging. After all the officials had spoken some one thought to ask the man being hung if he would like to say a few words. And he is reported to have said the following, “Except for the honor of this I’d just as soon not be here.”

Though not visiting us too often in as monumental a way as change was impacting this unfortunate man, change, the interruption of how things have been and the unavoidable confrontation with things new and unknown is one of life’s most difficult challenges.

So how can we accept the gift of life with its given of change? How do we handle all of the hellos and good byes of life?

Let me say the resources that help me most as I cope with change grow out of coming to recognize a basic reality about this life experience, one that I cannot alter, which is that life is always in flux. Barbara, you said it well the other day when you said something about each moment could never be like any other because all that we know in life is constantly changing. And, the deepest conviction that I have about what lies behind this great mystery we call life and it’s strong tie to change is that this life is a gift, and that the Giver, the One I call God, is totally, absolutely, completely good.

This is the conviction John Claypool came to as he faced the dreaded change that his daughter’s illness and death brought him. He said that if he was wrong about this, that he would lack any basis for hope.

I take very seriously that scripture which says that in God there is light, in God there is no darkness at all. The Bible says that God is unconditionally loving and everlastingly merciful and that there is no compromise, no turning from who God is.

And since God has structured life around the certainty of change, and since God is unmistakably good, I understand that this very process of change also can be safely regarded as good. By building the certainty of change into our lives, God, in His inscrutable way, is using change as one of the ways to bless us, one of the ways to take care of us.

Because change comes from God’s hand, it isn’t to be feared. It is to be accepted no matter how great the fear and pain. Amid the fear and pain of change we should expect that God waits for us on the other side, ready to bless us and give Love’s kind of joy and grow us and make our joys more complete.

It seems to me that this is what Jesus is saying when near the end of his life He spoke to his disciples about the coming events. He said in effect that it was to their advantage that this change would take place because on the other side of this change He was opening to them a new dimension of spirituality, one not limited by flesh and blood and one that could be experienced even now through the spiritual exercises of prayer, meditation and living according to love.

I believe the same is true for Journeys Community. We should adopt an attitude of active excitement and hopefulness as we accept the changes that are upon us. The key word here I believe in relation to things such as hope, excitement, new meaning, new possibilities is active. The key word is active. God gives us life not as a waiter serves a meal. God gives us the gifts of a meaningful life only on the terms that we will participate in all that is hopeful, meaningful and exciting to us. Ours is not a passive role, but an active one, co-creating with God all that is good and rewarding.

This is how I believe we meet the inevitable winds of change that come our way. We meet them with the confidence that partnering with God these changes can bring continued goodness and meaning to us. While change may sting and even scar us, it always offers us an opportunity to create again something wonderful and meaningful.

Claypool reminds that in just about every instance of change, there are two experiences that confront us, two dimensions to the change experience. First, we have the experience of loosing something that we had. And it’s always painful to run out of time with something or someone that is valued and meaningful to us, especially something or someone that feels essential in our lives.

But while change causes us to loose something we had, it also gives us the opportunity to gain something we didn’t have. Life is a mystery and includes change but on the other side of these times of change, if we will participate with, interact with, be a part of the picture where change has entered the scene, then change can be the catalyst to help us experience more blessings in our lives. With our participation, our active involvement in times of change, there exists the possibility for new blessings and new meaning in our lives.

It’s so easy to feel overwhelming despair when something ends before we want it to. It’s so easy to feel a sense of devastation, that something essential has ended, gone out of existence altogether. But the spiritual perspective is that loss and change are not annihilation, instead they are transition to a place where God’s blessings continue to be available to us.

Instead of annihilation, it’s a metamorphosis, even when change comes through tragic circumstances. It’s moving from one place to another. And the good news is that God waits for us on the other side of the loss, on the other side of the change and offers us the opportunity to keep on becoming, to keep on growing. We are moving to a place where we can experience even more of God’s love and blessing.

When my wife died, when Cathy died I felt like my life was over. The change that these dreaded events brought felt like annihilation. But a friend, a person of strong character and wisdom, someone more completely reconciled to the nuances of the life mystery suggested to me that what was ending was a prelude to what could begin if I was open to it.

He said to me, you can’t be passive at such times. You will never stop celebrating/valuing what was. It will continue to be part of who you are and will continue to strengthen and benefit you. But just as you were an active participant in ushering in all the goodness that change brought you in the past, so also you have to be an active participant in interacting with the new things happening in your life, out of which new treasure can be found.

And so he encouraged me to hold to the double dimension of change, to be honest about the loss dimension but also to be open to the gain dimension, the fact that there were things to look forward to even if they were unknown and shrouded in the darkness all around me; that they were none-the-less real and that they held the potential of blessing my life on the other side of this and every change.

We need at such times as these in our lives what Claypool calls flexible trust. It is being willing to consider that all has not been taken and that, on the other side of the ordeal of change, there is the possibility, with our participation, of new blessing.

Claypool says that the first commandment was placed first for a reason; God doesn’t want us to make an idol of any circumstance, any situation or any person. Because God knows that to make an idol of any situation in the past is to say, “If I can’t have that I don’t want anything.” That is the kind of thinking that is the greatest obstacle to finding peace in life. God wants us to realize that only God can support us and that, even amid the storm of change, especially amid the storm of change, we should hold close to God, hold close to Love. Remember, God is love.

And if we are flexible enough to trust God, to trust Love and be willing to relinquish what we cannot hold and then stoop over and try to make sense of what is left, there is always the possibility of meaning even in the face of incredible loss.

Change always takes something from us but, if we will see, it always gives something to us. And it’s in focusing on the possibilities inherent in the new that we can find that change is God’s way of growing us.

Claypool tells the story about Ruell Howe, a theologian, going to see a sick friend. This friend was at death’s door and Howe asked him what death looked like now that it was up close. The sick one responded that it had a familiar look to it; it reminded him of other times in his life. Death reminded him of when his mother first told him about school and how he felt as he left behind his days of playing in his yard and went to a new and unfamiliar place called school. He had been comfortable in his pre-school environment and leaving it to go to something new and unfamiliar was difficult. But, once there, he quickly saw how wonderful and full of new life, new possibilities this new place called school was. Again and again, life brought him to places where he finished the course he was on and needed to embark on a new course. Each time, the sick one said he found himself reluctant to leave where he was but quickly grabbed hold of the value and the expansion of joy and meaning that the new place afforded. Now that he was facing death, he said he had the same kind of feeling, he was reluctant to let go of the familiar but sure that the next venue would be fuller and more complete.

I have to tell you that this is the way I’m coping with all of the challenges that change has presented me. The way I’m coping is by acknowledging what I cannot deny, that life has changed, is always changing and what I most believe about the One who stands behind it all and has put the world together the way it’s put together. That is, that God is the light and in God there is no darkness at all. God, Love, is totally and completely good. And if that is true and if this life of change comes from God’s hand, then we can trust that on the other side of our losses, there is the possibility of incredible gain.

Claypool often reminded us of how St. Augustine said you could tell how God wanted us to live by where he has positioned our faces. Our faces are on the front of our heads looking forward. Our faces are not on the back of our heads looking back. For God the future is always more important than the past.

And so with faces pointed forward and with hands that have become open because we are willing to relinquish what we cannot hold on to and also because we are ready to receive what God wants to give us in the future, God offers us the opportunity to move into the place Love has prepared for us. God wants us to believe the poet that the best is yet to be.

There’s an old hymn I learned as a child. And it has spoken loudly and meaningfully to me in the times when the strong winds of change have blown in my life. It was written in 1873 by a man named Horatio Spafford shortly after learning that his wife and two of his children had died when a transatlantic ocean liner had gone down. His words say it all and I have held to them and found them to be true.

He wrote, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billow roll; what ever my lot, thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.”

Times may indeed get tough and the way ahead may seem frightening and unfamiliar; but because we are sons and daughters of love we are never without hope. And no matter how deep the valleys, it can still be well with our souls; if we remember that we are part of God, part of Love, and as such when love, when God is called to creative action, then we are too.

In that wonderfully healing community, Alcoholics Anonymous, you’ll often hear people talk about hitting bottom. Well, all of us can hit bottom. And when you do, you can discover that when you get to the bottom, through the grace of God, the bottom will hold. Because God loves you and me the worse things are never the last things. When we get to the bottom, God promises us that the bottom will hold us and can be the spring board for new life, different, yet full of God’s love and mercy.

And because God’s love includes you and me and this wonderful community we also have reason for hope. Journeys Community is facing the stiff winds of change. Some seem dreaded and will change the kinds of involvement that people near and dear to us have had here. While we celebrate the changes that Harry and Joan are welcoming into their lives we will for sure mourn their absence and always miss them. But what Harry started here quickly became a shared vision and its strength and special ness will insure that it continues. And that’s the greatest tribute that could be extended Harry.

As we move to another place, we will miss Vantage House, this place full of memories and special times together and we will face a new financial landscape as our funding shifts and changes. But I believe that just as all that has ever been good in our lives and in this community came to us on the wings of change that these new wings will also carry us to equally wonderful places. It’s true that necessity is the mother of invention. And this community while facing the imperatives of change is rich with resources, chief among them, you and I, and together we can ride these winds of change to new, creative and wonderful places.

While we have financial challenges, I’m reminded that much that is value added about this community has no financial cost tied to it. And those that do I’m certain we will find a way to continue them. If things come to look different, there is every opportunity to have that difference be good and valued.

Because of God’s love of which this community is a part, on the face of the future there is a smile. The future is friend and because of that we can hope.

Many years ago, with a group of close friends, I spent a weekend as a guest of a group of Trappist monks who have a monastery in Bardstown, Ky. Thomas Merton had been a member of this monastery. Sometime earlier, he had written a prayer that I later came upon. It carries the essence of my deepest petition to God at times in my life when the winds of change blow strongly. I’d like to share it with you and offer it as our prayer just now.

“God, we have no idea where we are going. We do not see the road ahead of us. We cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do we really know ourselves, and the fact that we think we are following your will does not mean that we are actually doing so. But we believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And we hope that if we do this you will lead us by the right road, though we may know nothing about it. Therefore, we will trust you always. Though we may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, we will not fear, for you are ever with us and you will never leave us to face our perils alone. Amen.”

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