Navigating Change

My friend was starting a new ministry, which is always an exciting and challenging time. New ministers and their congregations look forward to their fresh start, the possibilities of new things they can accomplish together. But that fresh start is also challenging- every congregation is totally unique, just as every minister is totally unique. It’s not actually possible for the new minister to pick up right where the old minister left off, nor is it possible for your new congregation to become like the congregation you left behind.

So my friend was in that challenging first year, navigating with his new congregation how they would sail the seas of this new shared ministry together. Towards the end of the first year one volunteer, who had been so generous of time and energy, listened some proposed changes the minister had planned for worship, became still and silent, and then said “No More Changes!”

Can I tell you lately, as we face change after change after change, I hear that voice in my head “No More Changes!”

As one of my colleagues who is about to celebrate 50 years in ministry said those first months of the pandemic “we’re all first year ministers now.”

Change is always part of life, seasonal changes, the changes of body and mind as we grow up and age, changes in technology and culture -- all growth is change. But when the changes come so quickly, one after the other, it’s hard on us humans, body mind and spirit.

This is because we build ourselves -- we build muscle, we build synapses, we make hormones and the other chemicals that run our body systems in response to our environment. Like a tree who reaches out a branch, slowly over the weeks and months and years, to capture a bit of sun on its leaves, like the tree on a windy cliff who grows slantwise, we build ourself based on what we experience, on the demands of our world. That’s why the daylight savings shift is so challenging; we have harmonized all our bodies systems to a particular schedule, and our bodies are built to keep doing what they’ve been doing.

Recently I’ve been doing PT to try to stabilize my back. I got a simple exercise to strengthen my mid back because apparently the hour after hour sitting hunched over my keyboard and phone have changed my muscles and not for the better. The PT showed me an exercise and showed me the muscles I was to use. I practiced dutifully for a week, but the more I tried the less confident I felt. Finally I went back and it turns out I was using the wrong muscles. It turns out that before I could strengthen those muscles the first thing I had to do was learn to feel where they were. It’s maddening to ask your mind to feel something you can’t feel -- you are literally building new connections.

How weird it feels to be in the middle of a transition- unsettled, you can't just relax and rest. Just as our bodies growing new muscle, brains growing new synapses, our ecosystem is adapting as quickly as it can to climate change, our culture is changing, our world is changing. Things have changed and they are not done changing. You know this, you know this in your bones, muscles, brain, gut. You feel it when you come back to church and it’s not like it was before.

Fortunately, one of the things we know how to do is change, is adapt. After a week of trying to locate my rhomboids, I found them! We know how to use zoom, if not perfectly, better than we did in 2019. Grocery stores learned how to deliver food. We learned how to wear masks. We learned how to provide better support those of us who have immune challenges. We learned that the gender binary is a construct that erases those of us who are nonbinary, or gender queer. We changed the way we use pronouns (turns out it wasn't even that hard). Those of us who are white learned to see systematic oppression and privilege in places we didn’t see it before.

So many things are in flux now, it feels sometimes like when you are standing or sitting on the sand by the ocean, feeling the warm sand under you. The waves come splashing in, and when the tide goes out it liquifies the sand and takes with it the ground that was literally under your feet. It can be very disconcerting, even if you know what’s happening.

Like the big creature our story this morning, whose world was turned upside down by the new visitor to his island, many of the discovering changes we are experiencing now were mostly externally initiated, not changes we chose. None of us chose covid or climate change, or these troubles with the economy, and when change disrupts our daily life, it reminds us how little we are in control of the universe. Like the creature in the story, it feels good when things are reliable, and we can choose a comfortable routine. I tell you I love my morning routine- and on days when it is interrupted, even if that’s because we have a dear out of town guest, I get a little out of sorts. When I start the coffee and let the dogs out, I feel like I live in an understandable world, I know my part in co-creating it, even if that’s just for me and Eric and the dogs, and you all here at church. But when I can no longer do the things that make up my ordinary days, I begin to feel uncertain about my role in the world wonder whether what we do really makes a difference. Change is happening, big changes little changes, too many changes!

This week the UUA is having feedback sessions about possible changes to Article 2, which includes our principles- the ones we just hung up on these beautiful banners last week. Our bylaws suggest we revisit Article 2 every 15 years, and last time the article 2 commission proposed its suggestions there was a giant collective yawn and nothing changed. Well, it’s time again, but this time people are riled up. Folks who attended the national gatherings tell me there are a surprising number of strong feelings. We are co-hosting a discussion with our local UU congregations, and in this week’s discussion it was clear we had touched a nerve. What would make draft bylaw revisions stir up such strong feelings? One minister suggested that it’s just so much change- change fatigue she called it. No More Change!

But then we remember, there are some changes we want. Some changes we have been working for and hoping for. We are all longing for a world where we celebrate only the gifts and resilience of Transgender persons on TDoR, and have no names to remember of those who died before their time. Aren’t we all longing for a world where systemic racism has been eradicated, a world where we “study war no more” where no child is hungry, and every person is able to develop to their full potential, where the eco systems have time to repair themselves? We do want change, and those are pretty big changes. And we certainly want our congregations, our UU denomination to be a community where historically marginalized voices are heard, where black lives matter, and sadly we are not there yet. Change is hard, change is uncomfortable, especially big change.

I think again of standing on the sandy shore of the ocean, now the big waves are coming in, maybe the waves before or after a storm, pulling the sand out from under my feet. Imagine now your own feet in the quickly disappearing sand of a shoreline. As the water rushes that sand away, your own feet are revealed. Whatever the waters of change wash away are not who you are right now. It’s not you that’s being washed away, and obvious as that may sound, it’s not always obvious in the moment. It helps to just remember who you are, alive in this moment right now. There’s very little we can do about the sand or the storm, but we can stand in the truth of who we are, now in this moment. As activist musician Bob Marley advised “Never forget who you are, and where you stand in the struggle.”

We often start a time of meditation by noticing the feet we stand on, or the part of us touching the chair that supports us. We do this because it can be exhausting and overwhelming to try to comprehend all the things around us, the water and the sand, the wind and waves. So many factors to consider and so little it in our control. We might get the impression we are like the sand that will be whisked away, but we are stronger and more cohesive than that. By our very standing we change the pattern of the water, and of the sand. Like the rock that splits the river. Ground yourself in yourself, whenever the sand is shifting beneath you.

That is the strongest, best place from which to navigate from. Then let hope be like the stars to navigate by. Times of great change are also times of great possibility. Keep your eyes on that vision of your heart’s deepest desire. Navigate by those stars.

Sometimes even the strongest rock comes loose in the changing tides. If change lifts you off your feet, and you feel adrift. when the flux is too much, remember love. Love is not landlocked; it is with us even in the churn. Love is in the wildest waves, in the strongest winds. Wherever this change is taking us, let love be our guide.