Rev. Cathy Harrington
This month’s theme is transformation. Transformation doesn’t happen instantly. It sometimes happens in small increments that we barely notice. As we look ahead to our fourth year of developmental ministry together, it would be useful to look back to see what we have accomplished. Change is inevitable, but transformation is a creative process that requires imagination and intention. Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
We don’t always get to choose the changes that occur in our lives, but how we respond to change matters. Author Barbara Kingsolver understands the importance of perception in life’s journey:
In my own worst seasons, I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.
This month take time to notice a “single glorious thing” at work, at home, or at church. What gifts are in plain sight that we have failed to notice? What does it mean to be a community of transformation, not just change? When we choose to “be in love with life” in spite of challenges and disappointments and even tragedy, we are participating in the creative process of transformation.
Henri-Frederic Ariel suggests that we leave space for surprises:
Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for an unknown God.
Leave space in your day for the unexpected. A friend once advised me to take time to let the tide go out.
See you in church!
Cathy