when your world implodes

The word change normally refers to new beginnings. But transformation, the mystery we are examining, more often happens not when something new begins, but when something old falls apart… Most of us would never go to new places any other way.

                               Richard Rohr

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I am currently tired of the world, as I know it, falling apart

 

and so much does seem to be

falling

apart

 

my daughter, a child of her times

would often sing the chorus of an R.E.M. song to her children

when the would decompensate over things not going their way…

 

“It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine”

 

it is the end of the world as we know it

with the growing darkness of authoritarianism, if not fascism

the Covid-19 virus

radical social change

and climate change

 

the world will never be the same

again

ever

 

that is NOT a bad thing

but it is a challenging thing, and uncomfortable thing

 

and for the most part

we are responding to the change

much as my grandchildren did (when very young)

to forces they too could not control

 

but we need this time of disruption

for often it is only disruption that will get us to the next new thing

to God’s new thing

 

I had a period of my life when I was shooting star

I was young, successful, climbing the ladder to the heights

 

but while all that wonderful goodness was going on

I had some stuff seriously wrong in my head and my soul

mostly a sense that I was not enough

so I try to work myself into relevance

 

I tried to use relationships to prop up a collapsing ego

 

I drank too much

 

I was dysfunction

 

and then my world imploded

and it hated it

and I despaired

 

and I wallowed for a while in fear, and anger

distrust and despair

 

but somehow I kept within shouting distance of Sacred

and eventually, just as Jonah was spit up from the belly of the whale

emerging from the deep and finding a new life

 

I found myself moving on

in new directions

doing new things

a mostly, but not totally new person

(it took another couple decades to get as far as I am now,

 and there is still transformation pending)

 

ah, the amazing gifts that I have found along the way

amazing jobs

new knowledge

great adventures

 

I could have suffered on, being eaten up from the inside out

but instead I found newness

 

this may be a time in our world

for transformation to happen

a time for ugly things to be reveal, and (hopefully) address

for things that hinder to be released

for transformation to happen

 

it can be

it will be

but only if, at the center of it all, is the Sacred

is Love

 

if the self is at the center, this disruption will lead to nothing more than

increased bitterness, to a narrowing down, a toxic defensiveness.  We will get trapped in pettiness.

 

if a political party is at the center, this disruption will lead to denial and

a refusal to see God’s new way

 

if a human leader is at the center of our universe, we will be cultish, and manipulated

 

if a country is at the center, we will find ourselves drawn to authoritarian, domination models, and will slowly sink into the mire of abuse, greed, and worse

 

But if God / Sacred is at the center, if and if we live from that center

than we have the security, we have the love, we have the power

to do life a different way

 

we have the power to be transformed

not forcefully changed from the outside in

but transformed, from the inside out

 

and that is when it happens

new birth

that is when it happens

generosity

kindness

inclusion

 

transformed by the renewing of our minds

we discover God’s new way

 

and then and only then

does disorientation become reorientation

then and only then

do we overcome evil and good

 

then and only then

does the kingdom come