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"The Day the World Changed”
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was in his later years, he was getting a bit forgetful. On one occasion, he found himself aboard a train, and when the conductor started coming down the aisle to pick up the tickets, Justice Holmes became quite agitated. He began frantically looking through all his pockets, and seemed to become more irritated, agitated, and disturbed as the conductor got closer and closer. The conductor recognized him, became aware of his frantic search for his ticket, and said:
“Justice Holmes. I recognize who you are, and I am sure you paid for a ticket. Please just relax. When you get to your destination you will no doubt find your ticket, and you can just mail it in to us.”
“Young man,” replied Justice Holmes, “I know I paid for a ticket. That’s not my problem. My problem is - where am I going?”
Today I feel invited to address change because this long holiday weekend commemorates the voyage of an explorer who didn’t know where he was headed….
On August 3, 1492, a group of adventurous me to bring back from their journey. For one hundred sixty-three long days there was no land in sight. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to do “offshore sailing” you know how anxiety-producing it can be to see nothing in any direction. I had the experience once thanks to my younger brother who captained a small sailing vessel for many years in the Caribbean, and I can tell you it’s unsettling. At any rate, at 2 am on October 12th, exactly five hundred and eleven years ago, while most of the world slept in their beds, a sailor on a small ship called the Pinta sighted land., and the world has never been the same since.
As you know, Columbus thought he had reached India, so he referred to the local inhabitants that he found when he went ashore as “Indians.” The fact he was completely wrong – that he was in the Bahamas and the people were Arawaks, turned out to be mere details. The aboriginal people in this part of the world have been “Indians” ever since. The success of Columbus’ efforts at the time was judged on whether he found any gold and silver. When he failed, Spanish monarchs lost interest in his expeditions and he died in relative obscurity.
Today we know it is irrelevant that Columbus didn’t know where he was going and that he didn’t find gold or silver. We know that his landing changed forever the history of the world. Columbus Day, is observed today throughout the western hemisphere. In the U.S. post offices, schools and banks are closed although our stores – containing goods more extravagant than Columbus’s wildest dreams, stay open. (This is fitting, isn’t it, since Columbus mission was in support of a better trade route? )
I say Columbus Day is “observed” rather than “celebrated” quite intentionally. Historians define the difference: “A celebration is a birthday party for which we put candles on the cake, forgetting imperfections, glossing over errors, and raising our glasses in unadulterated praise. ... An observance examines the whole event, puts it into a modern as well as a historical context, examines the world in which the event took place -- admits to the existence of both positive and negative aspects,” and attempts to communicate the true significancet. Our understanding of Columbus Day has changed as we have allowed ourselves to look back at the total picture of what has unfolded since Columbus, and since we have allowed ourselves to grasp the suffering of the aboriginal peoples – to see the total picture in both its positive and negative aspects.
Each of us lives in a historical landscape that is constantly moving and shifting and impacting whole peoples. Like Columbus Day, few events show their full meaning all at once.. In 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell, in Boston, tried out a new transmitter and spoke the words, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you…” a communications revolution was begun that Bell could not have imagined – and there was no looking back.. The same happened in 1903 when the Wright brothers took their first flight or when Enrico Fermi, unleashed the power of the atom. Intense change of a different kind began in 1955 the day Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, and the day Gandhi first practiced nonviolent resistance, and the day Kennedy was shot…New worlds were being born and old ones ending with each of these events. Not one of these individuals could know the full impact of their actions. 9/11 is a most recent example of an event that we observe closely because of forces that it has unleashed. The currents all of these events have set off are still breaking on the shores of human consciousness.
This motion-filled backdrop is the setting against which our own personal change also occurs. For both good or bad, many personal events unleash both external and internal forces that can cause our lives to never be the same again Changes happen. A loved one dies, you win the lottery, buy a new house, have a baby, get divorced or receive a promotion – something can , and for most of us, will, alter the pattern of our lives and cause us to lose our comfortable identity for at least a time. When this happens, we can find ourselves emotionally at sea, wanting to turn the clock back, to be the people we have always been, and yet unable to make that happen.
Author William Bridges says in order to grow we have to be willing to change. He points out that no matter how solid and comfortable and necessary our status quo may be, it too was once untried and uncomfortable. Change is not only the path ahead, it is also the path behind us. Most people, he says, would tell us that change is something we “naturally” resist. But Bridges disagrees. He draws an important distinction – he says most people don’t resist change itself – we resist transition – that is, we resist the process of letting go of the way things used to be, that is a prerequisite to taking hold of the way we subsequently will become. Bridges is an expert on transition..
We resist transition, Bridges says, because the first phase of letting go of the way things as they are and the working assumptions of our reality is so uncomfortable. . In between the letting go of one identity and the taking hold of another we experience a chaotic, uncomfortable space that Bridges calls the “neutral zone.” It’s like sailing off shore with no land in sight. (If I am not someone’s spouse, who am I? Without my job how do I describe myself to others? If I’m not you neighbor, where do I belong?) Although experiencing the neutral zone is very hard it is not really a negative state – rather, it is potentially creative. Research shows that unexpected solutions to difficult problems and creative ideas in general tend to come out of a murky state where purpose and focus are temporarily suspended – a state very much like what Bridges calls the neutral zone.
In both the Old and New Testaments there are many accounts of people who are in transition getting a visit from an angel or having a dream in which God speaks to them. We open to these voices when we are in the wilderness of the neutral zone.
We find transitions so hard, Bridges says, that sometimes we make changes just so we won’t have to make transitions. We walk out on marriages, but keep the attitudes that destroyed them or we move away from a town that doesn’t have any “interesting people” only to find that the new location doesn’t either.
Bridges has written a series of books devoted to transitions that strike me as very helpful and an appropriate tool for any individual who might be feeling like an explorer who set off in life to do one thing and now may end up doing another. One of his helpful insights is that it isn’t really practical to do a whole, from-the-ground-up reinterpretation of reality every morning before we get out of bed.. We can’t modify our self images bit-by-bit, moment-by-moment to keep up with the daily pressures that are thrust upon us. It’s too much. That’s why we tend to stick with our self-understanding until some kind of change comes along and jars our whole inner world out of its old alignment. When this happens we are plunged into transition.
Transition begins with letting go of old forms, assumptions and identities, plunging us into a neutral zone. What happens, though, is that the shedding of the old makes room for something new. Given time and space and openness to the process a new, healthy identity emerges. The loss and the endings make room for rebirth and renewal.
Our transitions often make us feel guilty. We feel guilty for having changed or for not feeling the way we are supposed to feel. Since we’re observing Columbus Day , and Columbus was an illustrious Italian – let me share one transition that distance now allows me to share about what happened when I married Larry – my warm and wonderful extrovert of an Italian husband. I imagined our mutual love overcoming all obstacles but failed to consider the changes I would face in living as I had to blend into the maelstrom of the noise, food and large crowds that his Italian-American heritage brought with it. I can remember one time over the Christmas holidays (we were usually together three families or more for a week or so) withdrawing for a couple of needed hours of solitude. From my room I could hear the voices together, all talking at once, lots of laughter, with people having to talk at a high volume in order to get heard at all. This was foreign to me and exhausting. When my brother-in-law confronted me about leaving for hours at a time I told him I was unused to being in crowds for extended periods – days on end and just needed occasional breaks. Instead of nodding in sympathy he became outraged that I had referred to the family as a crowd. A family is not a crowd.
There were times that I despaired. I had thought I was headed for India when I married but found myself in the East Indies. Over the years it worked itself out – I grew a lot, became more able to join in – and the family also became understanding of my need for solitude.
You may be in the midst of a transition in your life, or you may still be seeking to clarify the meaning of some transition that has already taken place. We have in this church a small group that meets on the first Monday of every month that is dedicated to sharing and clarifying their personal stories. Their name, as far as I can tell, is just the First Monday Group.
Having a community of support can soften transitions. Religious community especially softens transitions – at their best they provide a safe place for putting our experiences in perspective – a place that also changes but which provides a caring and a love which are eternal as a healing balm.
Gandhi once said,
“I do dimly perceive that while everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing power of spirit is God…” Gandhi
Each month the First Monday Group members share as much or as little as they wish on a topic that has been selected for that month. The group functions as a small group ministry. These are my words, but I think it is fair to say that one purpose of the group is to understand oneself better and to locate the self in relation to the informing power of the spirit.
The First Monday Group opens to new members only occasionally, because it on bonding and the closeness that comes within the context of a stable and safe community. If you’d like a place where you can share yourself and listen to other people’s stories unfold over time, see Janet Walkden – the group will remain open to newcomers through November and then close again in December.