Movement, Change and Transformation

 This week's quotation, by Hungarian spiritual writer, Elisabeth Haich, really struck a chord. "Life," she wrote, "is movement, change, transformation."

And of course, she's right. Much though we may hate to hear it, as often as we may kid ourselves that our lives are going on very much the same as they always have, it isn't true. I'm not the same person as I was yesterday, or last week, last month, let alone last year.

Because we live in a world where we are always encountering new things - new experiences, new people, new thoughts and ideas, new nudges from the Spirit. And we cannot help being changed by them. It may take us a while, screaming, protesting, and dragging at the hand that is trying to lead us forward, but we'll get there in the end.

How much better to be open to movement, change, transformation. To embrace it, even... I honestly believe that it is up to us to keep our hearts and minds and spirits open to new experiences, so that we may grow as people.  It's also important to be nice to ourselves, to understand our natural inclination towards the status quo, and not beat ourselves up when we resist movement, change, transformation. And to understand that these things are just as hard for everyone else we know, and not to blame them when they, too, resist.

Letting go of the old can be even more difficult. Many of us find it easier to hold on to old grudges, old hurts, old griefs, preferring to stay behind our armoured souls in case life hurts us once again. It is much more courageous to doff our armour, reveal our vulnerabilities and embrace the new. But it is a wonderfully rewarding way to live.

Each of us has been given a brain and a heart to approach the new in a spirit of curiosity, rather than dread. Let us use them as best we can, so that we may grow into the best people we can be. Let us pray to be awake and aware and open to new experiences.

Transforming Your Pain

They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. This happened to me yesterday afternoon, in the car on the way to lead worship at Dudley. I was listening to Richard Rohr's marvellous course The Art of Letting Go, which I've had for years and listened to numerous times. This time, in the last lecture, the phrase "If you do not transform your pain, you will always, always transmit it" jumped up and bit me.

"If you do not transform your pain, you will always, always transmit it."

I have listened to him saying that phrase many times, and have never been able to understand it. How on earth can you transform your pain? But this day, I suddenly realised that transmitting it is exactly what I have been doing. I have struggled in my relationship with a particular person, never mind who, for a long time. Anything that person said or did, I reacted to, and not often in a good way. It has caused me a good deal of suffering, but it was not until yesterday, that I realised that I have been transmitting that suffering, by sharing my negativity about that person with my nearest and dearest.

Rohr went on to say that we don't have to do this, that there is another way. We can step away from the conflict - whatever it is - and refuse to engage with it. Which means that we will be able to see the person we have trouble with, straight, without all the negative garbage we have attached to them.

I thank God for opening the ears of my heart, and for showing me that there is another way. To quote another wise guru, Brene Brown, I am going to trying to "assume positive intent", try to believe that the person is doing the best that they can. I have realised that the reactive me is my Relative Self, and that I have an Absolute Self, who can rise above petty irritations, and not react. 

I don't expect to manage it straight away, but I am, by God, going to try.