Change
About ten years ago a friend of mine from high school, well, her mom decided to divorce her dad. The reason: he hadn’t changed. About six years ago another friend decided to become a monk in the Russian Orthodox Church. One of the reasons: they were the closest thing to what the Church was 2,000 years ago, unchanged. Three days ago I took my car to the dealer. The reason: it was time for an oil change.
Something I am noticing more and more as it is happening is the change in my perspective, change in paradigm, change in outlook of the world, the people, the way I relate to them, to it – it’s constantly changing. And it drives me crazy some days! Most of the time it simply keeps me on my toes and reminds me I am alive.
A few weeks ago I was in a meeting with a bunch of Christians. Listening to them talk they used these phrases, “Moved by the spirit, “ “my calling,” “anointed.” I kept asking myself, “What does that mean? What do they mean when they say that?” I, also, found that it was all rather shocking to me. Something had changed. For the first time since being in New Zealand, I knew what it felt like to enter a church as if I'd never been there before. All these strange words and this dialect that made no sense to me. Later, I told one of my mates I might have to start going to regular church so I wouldn’t be so shocked by the language I heard. I had changed to the degree that I no longer understood this language with which I was once so familiar.
Another quote from Lewis’ Perelandra: “This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice, or even made to move backwards…was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself – perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defiance against chance, a security for being able to have a thing over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film.” A theme that hovers through the book is how we work so hard to have things not change, to repeat events, people. Emotions. The itch to unroll the film of our life twice, or to even stop it all together and stop change. How boring would it be to watch a movie and stop the film half-way through to just watch the one scene over and over again? This is not what we were made for….
In the past few months I find this subterranean, tectonic change happening in my soul…the kind of change that might not be noticed for months but the effects are permanent and will change the landscape forever. I think I am actually starting to not just be amazed by it, but actually believe and move into the person God made me to be – someone much greater than I ever would have imagined, but at heart always knew was there. And let me tell you….it scares the shit out of me.
Until I die, things will always be changing. It can drive a man mad, but it usually drives a man to be man, a woman to be a woman.
Something I am noticing more and more as it is happening is the change in my perspective, change in paradigm, change in outlook of the world, the people, the way I relate to them, to it – it’s constantly changing. And it drives me crazy some days! Most of the time it simply keeps me on my toes and reminds me I am alive.
A few weeks ago I was in a meeting with a bunch of Christians. Listening to them talk they used these phrases, “Moved by the spirit, “ “my calling,” “anointed.” I kept asking myself, “What does that mean? What do they mean when they say that?” I, also, found that it was all rather shocking to me. Something had changed. For the first time since being in New Zealand, I knew what it felt like to enter a church as if I'd never been there before. All these strange words and this dialect that made no sense to me. Later, I told one of my mates I might have to start going to regular church so I wouldn’t be so shocked by the language I heard. I had changed to the degree that I no longer understood this language with which I was once so familiar.
Another quote from Lewis’ Perelandra: “This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice, or even made to move backwards…was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself – perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defiance against chance, a security for being able to have a thing over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film.” A theme that hovers through the book is how we work so hard to have things not change, to repeat events, people. Emotions. The itch to unroll the film of our life twice, or to even stop it all together and stop change. How boring would it be to watch a movie and stop the film half-way through to just watch the one scene over and over again? This is not what we were made for….
In the past few months I find this subterranean, tectonic change happening in my soul…the kind of change that might not be noticed for months but the effects are permanent and will change the landscape forever. I think I am actually starting to not just be amazed by it, but actually believe and move into the person God made me to be – someone much greater than I ever would have imagined, but at heart always knew was there. And let me tell you….it scares the shit out of me.
Until I die, things will always be changing. It can drive a man mad, but it usually drives a man to be man, a woman to be a woman.