Mutability

Shelley, as he so often does, said it best:

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
   How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!-- yet soon
   Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
   Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
   One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;
   We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
   Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
   The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
   Nought may endure but Mutability.

Indeed, just as Shelley says in "Mutability," there is no constant but change.  And yet, how we see that change can be drastically different.  For example, at how many churches can you hear the cry of "We need more young people!"  And yet, when asked if a young person can be put in charge of something, how many churches will laugh at the thought?  The truth is, change, even in the times we welcome it, is scary.  To paraphrase the old saying, the devil you know's better than the one you don't.  It's preferable to most people to stay where they are, even if that place is no good, because there's no risk involved in staying put.  Oh, sure, you may risk life or limb in the status quo, but who knows what a change would mean?  It could mean something very frightening - even more frightening than what we already have, and thus "worse" than what we have now, even if "now" is pretty bad.

And while this goes for individual lives, I'm really thinking about this more in a corporate sense right now.  We've read some articles recently that really highlighted the difficulty of change for organizations.  In the introduction to a book by Laurent Parks Daloz, he writes a chapter dedicated to "Connection and Complexity:  The Challenge of the New Commons."  In reality, this chapter doesn't have a ton to offer, because it's serving to set up the rest of the book.  But it does give an insight into what he's looking for in people's lives.  One of the things he uses to highlight the struggles people face with change is the personal story of an MBA student named Raphael who is planning a project of building a new plant.  The student suggests that the ecological and sociological effects in one possibility make it the clear choice.  To this, one of his classmates shoots up a hand and replies, "Save the whales on the weekend!" (Parks Daloz, 1-2).  Again, while one classmate advocates change, his voice is silenced - he is dumbstruck by the rebuttal - by the status quo.  And it's true:  as long as there's more money to be made in another location, that will be the choice.  But the other meaning Parks Daloz points out is that this second student is, in fact, suggesting that social and environmental involvement is a good thing - he is just able to act as if that can possibly exist in a sphere completely separate from the world of work.  One wandering thought pollutes the day.

"Any organization whose context experiences signifi­cant change will be tempted to behave as if it can continue with business as usual and still remain effective. On this point,  religious congregations are  no  different.  Churches  sometimes  persist with the same activities and procedures for a long time,  in spite of glaring evidence that they are losing effectiveness" (George and Beverly Thompson, "No Surprises Please," Grace for the Journey, 99).  And here's where we get more specific about churches.  Again, while in the Parks Daloz example I mentioned, we see a business overrun by status quo, here we see the same problem in churches.  So often, people believe that what worked for them will continue to work; that what worked 6 months ago should still be fine; that what the last pastor did will be the same with this pastor.  But the truth of the matter is, as time changes and people change and organizations change, so too policies and structures need to change.  And yet, even in the church, we are hesitant to embrace these changes, because the mean taking a risk, stepping outside our comfort zone, and attempting a new thing.  We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon.

So far, we've discussed how organizations are intertial when it comes to change.  And we've looked at how that same ethos infects the church.  But what is the alternative?  In Margaret Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science, she has a chapter titled "Change:  The Capacity of Life."  Therein, Wheatley begins with an illustration of listening to the radio, to a geologist talk about a coming hurricane.  The host asked the geologist what he expected to find when he went out to survey the impact of the storm, to which the interviewee replied, "I expect to find a new beach" (Wheatley, 137).  Now, this sort of story has a tendency to be read as every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining-so-just-look-on-the-bright-side-of-things-and-it'll-all-be-okay, but Wheatley deftly avoids that possibility by explaining that this is not a story about perspective, but about the inevitability of change, and the fact that ultimately, we're afraid of it.  Now, a hurricane is devastating, and in that instance, looking on the bright side of things should not be our first response.  But being able to see opportunities when they're right in front of us is something we're really bad at.  For example, who hasn't bemoaned the American church's current predicament in regards to membership and giving?  Since the 1950s, it's way, way down (actually at historic levels, but that's a different conversation).  But I heard the pastor of my home church once preach a sermon in which he declared that now, we're not in a time of social obligation for coming to church; we're in a time when people only come because they actually want to be there!  Isn't that amazing?  In the 1950s, you were an outsider if you didn't go to church; now, you're an outsider if you do.  The only people coming are those who genuinely think the Gospel has something to offer them.  And that's probably the most exciting thing that could've happened to the church.  Would we like more members?  Sure.  But who wouldn't rather have a small number of people on fire by the Holy Spirit than ten times more who didn't care?  Of course, this news doesn't change the fact that things will change.  We need to adapt.  And it will be scary.  We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep.

But there is Good News!  God is doing a new thing: "Look!  I'm doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don't you recognize it?  I'm making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness" (Isaiah 43:19).  You see, God promises us that there will be new things.  And God promises that those new things aren't up to us alone!  Maybe this is just one of those things that comes from being someone of a Reformed theological bent at a Wesleyan seminary, but I have a lot of trouble with people telling me I can change the world.  And that's because I know I can't.  I'm human.  Humans have tried over and over again to change the world, and we've failed every time.  We've promised better living through technology, through theocracy, through civic organization, through politics, through anything you can think of - and every time, it comes up short.  That's part of why these readings challenge me.  They talk about our shortcomings, and my first thought is well, duh!  We know that we fail over and over again.  For example, Wheatley discusses at length on 138 and following how what's required of us is wider vision, to see whole systems.  And she discusses how difficult that is for us, saying, "learning to observe the whole of a system is difficult."  Wrong.  It's impossible.  And that's why we need God.  And the funny thing about God is that we are being shown, each and every day, in small ways and in large, the new things God is doing.  Sometimes, we ignore.  Sometimes, we don't notice.  But it's all around us.  Change is happening everywhere, and God is directing it.  It is our job to work with God to accomplish the change that will bring about healing in the world.  After all, Nought may endure but Mutability.

Edges and Gaps...

This blog post is a reflection on Where the Edge Gathers, by Yvette Flunder, and "The Broken-Open Heart," by Parker Palmer.

I found reading Yvette Flunder's Where the Edge Gathers to be a frustrating experience as a third-year seminary student.  This is not because she doesn't write well; she writes fine.  It's not because she has nothing valuable to say; she does.  It's because at this point, as a third-year seminarian in a left-leaning, mainline seminary, there's very little I read in Flunder's book that I haven't read a thousand times before.  Yes, we are called to preach at the edge.  Yes, there is a need for radical inclusivity in the church.  Yes, there is a need to break down the barriers set up by human beings, and to build towards the community God envisions for us in the New Jerusalem.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with these assertions; I support them.

In fact, one thing I see as necessary in my own ministry is to do what the PCUSA's "Brief Statement of Faith" says:  "to unmask idolatries in church and culture" in the power of the Holy Spirit.  My hope is that God can use me in my ministry to help look at the various idolatries against which we struggle.  The idolatry of American culture, to which we're all prone; the idolatry of prosperity, to which we're all drawn; to bibliolatry, by which the church and all its members are ever tempted.  This is perhaps my biggest hope for my own ministry:  to work with my congregation to find the places in which we're blinded, and to work through them and through our human limitations and temptations to work for God in the world.

As I said at the top, Flunder's book (the first half, anyway) was very frustrating for re-hashing things that have been rehearsed so many times they can almost seem trite.  But her sermons were very good.  In particular, I was drawn to the sermon "Juneteenth" (pg. 77).  The story of Juneteenth (which she re-hashes in the sermon) is that of the slaves in Texas finally learning that they were freed on June 19, 1865 - two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.  I think the reason I was drawn to that particular sermon on that particular topic is that Juneteenth illustrates to me Palmer's idea of the "tragic gap."

Parker Palmer, in his essay "The Broken-Open Heart," defines the "tragic gap" as "the gap between what is and what could and should be."  Juneteenth is an example of this because what could have and in fact should have been was freedom for the slaves of Texas (obviously, morally, they never should have been slaves in the first place; I'm speaking to the legal reality that they were no longer slaves).  Yet, on that very day, they found themselves living in the reality of slavery.  Juneteenth is the day that people were made aware of what was already true:  they were free.

In essence, I hope that my ministry can function that way, as well.  That it can serve as a way to help people identify "tragic gaps."  Of course, there is the ultimate tragic gap we all face, and to which Flunder refers on page 79:  that we are set free in Jesus.  That's the obvious one to go after in ministry, though.  And while that message undergirds all of what I hope my congregation(s) and I can accomplish, I hope that we can find the more "mundane" tragic gaps in people's lives, and help to bridge the is and could/should be more easily.

Obviously, these are lofty goals for ministry.  I don't intend to set out to fix the world's problems:  that's God's job.  But I do believe in working for the world God intended.  And I hope that my ministry will reflect that goal.