Something Needs To Change

It's a question of change or be changed. Because it's one of those things that we really don't have a lot of choice over. Change has been for all of us the one constant, the perpetual norm, since we emerged from the womb, and really were it not for the constant change of the very cells that make up our bodies multiplying and replicating and repairing and replacing themselves, without all that perpetual motion of change, we simply wouldn't be. Not to mention all the changes that occur as we go through the various stages of life, till we breathe our last and our bodies, through a process of change and disintegration are returned to the elements from which we all came. I am thinking of the various changes I have undergone. As a child, making friends with other kids in the neighbourhood, losing and making new friends, or coping with loneliness and learning to use my solitude constructively when I found myself at times friendless. Going from kindergarten to elementary school. Changing residences when my parents decided to buy a bigger house on a much smaller property in a more densely populated subdivision. Changing schools. My parents' divorce. Living without my father who, since becoming a fisherman, was usually absent half the year, anyway. Changing schools, then moving into junior secondary school, experimenting with drugs, puberty, discovering that I was suddenly more small adult than large child. Exploring ideas and alternatives and different philosophies (this was 1970!). Becoming a Christian, or in my case, a teenage Jesus freak, and the changes that occurred in my life from that momentous decision, or rather, acceptance of God. New friends again, and learning to live a life that was very Christian, unselfish, generous and focussed on Christ. The change from the infilling of the Holy Spirit, filling me with such a force of love, power and joy, such as I had never known was possible to human experience. Even when I tried to backslide, I couldn't stay away forever from the direction my life had taken. I tried to enforce change against the change that was inevitable and it was the inevitable change that won over the intentional. I went through a variety of churches and forms of community and spiritual experience and expression while negotiating a secular world that does not recognize faith. I had to keep changing in order to accommodate the imposed and inevitable changes that life and necessity were always imposing on me. For change not to be a destructive force we have to find ways to accommodate. We have to let change transform us, because if it doesn't it will kill and destroy us. We have to let go of our sense of entitlement and embrace what is already here, because it is already embracing us. This doesn't mean that we have to like or approve of the change. We do have to accept it. It doesn't mean that we are unable to or powerless to address and influence change. We all have those capacities but we have to carefully measure them against the inevitable. This can be particularly hard, especially when people are being hurt and lives are being destroyed. I am thinking of our current catastrophe of homelessness thanks to legislated poverty. It is possible, in a democracy, to influence government to change policies that are harmful to people. It is a long and thankless process, but it needs to be done. In the meantime, we are living in conditions that are less than ideal. They have always been less than ideal, and there is always going to be this intricate dance as we negotiate between powers of change that we cannot control, and channelling them into forces of transformation as we offer our lives anew, to the new, and continue to move forward despite the opposition looming before us.