Category: faith

Transformation Happens

Rachel Henry2 Comments

I recently discovered another “cherished illusion,” as Jim Finley calls them, namely that I grow and change through my own initiative and on my own schedule. This is simply not true. We’re not so different from the rest of creation. We can no more decide to enter a new phase of life before we’re ready than a tree can decide to drop its leaves in spring.

If a six-year-old informed us that she was going to learn to drive or do calculus or carry a thirty-pound rock, we wouldn’t expect it to happen. Yet when we become adults, we think that we should be able to will ourselves to be whoever we want however and whenever we wish.

Just as shorter days mean less sunlight and therefore less green chlorophyll to hide the stunning reds and yellows always present but not visible in the trees’ leaves, we change in response to events in our lives, most of which are beyond our control. The big difference between us and the trees is that we often have different plans. Maybe we want to be green all the time or, come August, are impatient to display our more showy selves.

Though what’s happening doesn’t originate with us, we can choose whether to resist or participate. If you’re like me, there’s a fair amount of push back going on. At the heart of my resistance is a lack of trust in the cosmic becoming in which we all play a part.

Let’s be clear, there are a lot of reasons to mistrust: black holes, dying starts, war, famine. But let’s be equally clear that my cosmic plan doesn’t extend much past dinner, so just maybe the Creator of the universe has something going on that I don’t fully understand, something bigger than me and my preferences, and maybe, in ways we can live but not grasp, it is a “plan for [our] welfare, not for woe” (Jeremiah 29:11).

This transformation is happening, but it’s not being done to us. It is coming into being with, in, and through us. “The world becomes new, if one does not stand in the way,” my friend Bardwell says. Let’s practice not standing in the way.

Trusting the Present

Rachel Henry4 Comments

During a recent run, my mind decided it, too, needed a workout, but it preferred to travel the same loop over and over again. I spent a lot of time bringing myself back to the present, which was a mostly pleasant place to be. I felt my feet hitting the ground, the warm air, the presence of the oak trees around me. But now and then, after dragging myself off the hamster wheel, I sensed a moment of definite fear.

What was so scary? I was in a safe place—except perhaps for the mountain lions, but I had never actually seen them—on a trail through some beautiful country. I was healthy enough to be running. No one in my life had any particular or imminent problems.

Stopping underneath an oak to spend some time with the question, I realized that, with my mind in the present, I had no idea what came next. If we live here now, we have to live in the reality that we don’t control a moment of our existence. We can and need to prepare and plan to exist in this world, but not a single day entirely matches the picture in our heads.

To live this way requires an immense amount of trust, not that everything will go right—whatever that means—but that, as Jim Finley puts it, “God sustains us in all things while protecting us from nothing.” Life will happen whether we’re living in the present or not, but we choose how to respond. If we’re living from a place of trust in that which sustains us, we can respond in a way that is life-giving.

But this is really, really hard because there’s not much room for who we think we are or who we want to be in that kind of trust. It demands an openness to discovering ourselves rather than an attempt to dictate our identity. When we’re in discovery mode, we can see ourselves as God does, as divinity becoming creation, as process.

Our own vision is much more static and limited. It feels safer because it’s familiar, but it can’t take us where we’re going; it doesn’t bring us into being. That journey requires faith and trust—and I’m sure a little bit of pixie dust wouldn’t hurt.