Change Anyone? Anyone???
As I lean into a long holiday weekend today, I find myself reflecting upon the carousel of kaleidoscopic changes that have come to me and to our clan over the course of the last year plus. Shifting away from a career that I’d embraced for over two decades to embrace a new challenge and an incredibly taxing new work. Seeing our youngest go off to college. Experiencing the unique wonder that is grandparenthood with the arrival of our granddaughter. Navigating another wedding and welcoming another son-in-law to the fold. Witnessing and adjusting to the increasing needs of elderly parents. Quite a list and certainly not an exhaustive one!
While change is certainly something we all know and experience both on a macro and microscopic level, our level of acceptance and embrace of this reality is, well, (at least for me) not so great. I am certainly one of those humans who is, in many respects, a creature of habit. I like my morning ritual of feeding our cats, the birds outside, and brewing my daily dose of coffee. When it is interrupted, I’m a less happy camper. I like having my “toasty” (a turkey and cheese sandwich with toasted bread and the cheese melted) along with my fresh vegetable salad at lunch time when home. I crave my multiple pilgrimages to the gym each week for cardio and weights and again, if work or travel interrupt this, find myself well, not my best self. So yes, change is inevitable AND yes, change is also at times extremely hard.
I came across a piece recently by Father Edward Hays, whose Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim (my wife introduced me to a number of years ago), that speaks to both the challenge and the opportunity life’s changes bring.
In this erratic era of change, this earthquake season of transition, which
Causes the crumbling and collapse of social structures and traditions….
I am challenged to rise up out of the rubble, not a victim, but a victor….
But every sweeping storm of change is so strenuous and fraught with fears,
So threatening at my age to begin afresh again.
O God of creations and transformations, who constantly begets new beginnings,
Inspire me by your perpetual creativity. Call me to change, to dig deeply
Within myself, to find the uncultivated capabilities, the undiscovered diamonds
And reserves of resources that you buried deep within. As I step out on The edge, afraid and doubtful of my abilities…with your belief in me and your
Great hand to support me, all things are possible….
May it be so. Amen.
Brian works with a local OPO (Organ Procurement Organization) as well as teaching adjunctively at local seminary. He is loving his new identity as a “Pops” and appreciates times like a long holiday weekend when the merry-go-round of life slows up a bit.