change

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. ”

                      William S. Burroughs

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

                      Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

___________________________

we sit in our homes

some of us

sheltering in place

hoping it will all go away, and life can return to normal

we protest in the streets

some of us

howling at the injustice of it all

wanting simply to go back to the way things were

this is one of those times

when the world has been turned upside down

and there is that lingering fear for some

and lingering hope for others

that this is indeed “the end of the world as we know it”

this is not the first time humanity

has reached a moment of discontinuity

when an intrusion so powerful occurred

that life shifted

the Bible is full of such stories

The Garden of Eden

The tower of Babel

The Flood

The Exodus

The Exile

The Incarnation

Easter

Pentecost

and what is revealing about these moments

is how all of these moments of change

of transition

are times of both suffering and hope

are times of resistance and acceptance

it seems that change does not come easily

left to ourselves we often would simply

not change

in our comfort

even in our discontent

we often resist those transitions that would move us forward

toward newness

which is why change so often comes

through times of turmoil

and pain

and suffering

we have to be dragged

kicking and screaming

into that place where we want to change

where we accept the need to change

and even then

even we begin the trek to the new land

we waver

howling in the desert

like the people of Israel

newly freed

“we wanna go back!”

but we can’t go back

the land flowing with milk and honey lies ahead

through the wilderness

through the wasteland

the way forward

will take time

our “40 years”

it will take leaving behind terrible things

and leaving behind precious things

it will demand our acceptance

of new realities

new priorities

old and new values

and we will not like it

we might well hate it

but we must embrace it

and it will be

in the end

Good News

A magnificent defeat

I love the words of Sonya Renee Taylor

Who wrote on Instagram

“I feel like the bearer of news that sounds awful but actually is not.

We will not go back to normal.

Normal never was.

Our pre-corona existence was not normal

other than we normalized greed,

inequity,

exhaustion,

depletion,

extraction,

disconnection, confusion,

rage, hoarding, hate and lack.

we should not long to return my friends.

we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment.

One that fits all of humanity and nature”

This is a time of anguish

This is a time of discontent

This is a time of desperation

This is a time to let go

This is a time to embrace

This is a time of hope

This is a time for “God’s New Thing”