Change (part 1) - 1st Steps

Change hurts.  It requires bleeding.  Crying.  Sweating.  The liquids of transition.  Letting go of a way of life.  Holding out for a better one.  There are no guarantees where we are going is better than where we have been.  Gravity tells us to stay.

But Something Else tells us we must go.

That Voice is the beginning of something new.  At first it is more disorienting than anything else.  It necessarily throws the world we have so carefully crafted into a tailspin.  Worse we don’t know with certainty where our steps lead.  We can barely make out the next step of our path.

Yet we walk.  One step in front of the other.  Eyes ahead into a distance we can not yet see.  Focused.  Determined.  Hopeful and trusting.  Arms wide open.  Bring what you will Life.  We will keep walking.  Keep believing.  Keep living in the light of hope.

Not by what is seen.  But by what will be seen.  What for now only remains a longing, somewhere in our imagination - in the fertile ground of a beautiful future, is a vision worth pursuing.  It starts with me.  Or at least with my willingness to let go.  To free up room to let it be.

This again requires dysphoria in the present.  It requires letting go of current certainties.  Holding loosely to what we have.  Accepting opposing ideas at the same time.  Living with tension.  And part of that tension, we can not explain or justify.  Not yet.

Our tolerance for ambiguity will be seen by some as weakness.  They will be critical.  They will attack it as indecisiveness.  They will draw lines.  Arbitrary lines.  They will insist we follow.  Make decisions.  Do something.  We must remain, though, resolutely irresolute.

We don’t know.  Not yet.

We understand this is frustrating.  We don’t make lines.  Though we honor transcendent ones.  We tread carefully.  And waitingly.  We look.  We listen.  We wander.  We trust.  We lean into the story.  Our story.  Though we alone are not its author.    

There is Someone Else.  Someone not manipulating our strings, but orchestrating them. Beautifully.  Luring us.  Inviting us.  Asking us simply to receive.

Will we remain stuck?  Resolute in our way.  Scared.  The alternatives to saying yes to this advent are not good.  We are not free to make life what we want it to be.  We can not shape it ourselves.  But we can, certainly (and this is the real work of the truly creative) let it thrive among us.

Invite it to take root.  Foster its conditions inside us.

For where life is, there also is everything we are looking for.  Everything we need (and honestly want).  It’s all there, and here, in this journey, toward our yet invisible destination.  This is it!  This is the ride of life.  Of saying yes.  This IS what we have been looking for.  This IS life.

In taking steps forward, in trust, we learn even more we need Someone Else.  Someone outside of ourselves. A guide, companion, yes even a friend.  And even before we have a name for this Someone we can learn to trust. Because we find here a deep sense of completion, wholeness, contentment.  In recognizing this Someone Else, something changes.

We are part of a bigger story.  Our lives are more rightly ordered.    

And that alignment alone can bring the sort of life-giving energy we are desperate for.  It’s not a great idea. Or a great plan. Or a strategic breakthrough.  It’s this Someone Else not giving up on us.  Resolute.  Determined.  There is nothing more powerful in the world.  Nothing.

Whatever lies ahead, we are not alone.  Can you believe?