I was thinking about change again and how one effects lasting change in life. As I mentioned previously, my friend Carol says you must find someone to guide you. When you look to make a change that is genuinely fundamental, your footing is sure to become slippery. Your guide can help with your footing and provide emotional and intellectual sustinence to speed you on your way.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber says that in sofar as a relationship (with God) is concerned, you must have the will to seek out the relationship and the grace to receive the relationship. Another simple but profound assertion. I have long observed that when searching for that new or obscured path, you gotta want it. You gotta want it so bad that you will keep looking long after it's dark and well past your fatigue. You gotta want it. But only with maturity (defined as the passing of years, not as the ideal state!), have I contemplated the state of effecting change, reaching a goal, touching the stars and the Day After. What next? What next.

The grace to receive the relationship, to accept the change poses a far more perplexing challenge that making the change itself. After all, I have this guide who keeps the path lit, the firewood dry, and the rain off my back. Although the struggle of change is sometimes fierce, is often fierce, it is temporary and finite. This, too, shall pass. Receiving the effected change and living well with it is a completely different matter far more burdensome than imposing a necessary regimen of self-discipline and summoning courage to set out on a certain determined path. The destination of change is a far less accomodating host than the path of change.

I expect, just absorbing the beginnings of change around me, that the destination of change could be a confusing and disappointing place. People around you, maybe because they lack grace in their own lives, might fuel much of that confusion and disappointment. Because old routines and practices are disrupted and destroyed, they wonder where the change in your life leaves them. Does their relationship with you still exist because you have changed? On some level are you the same person as the changed person? I believe they also can feel a certain guilt and mount a defense because they have not embarked upon a change. Finally, people most always will take comfort in the status quo rather than embrace change because they know what comes next with the status quo. Hence the grace in being open to a new relationship and living well once you arrive at your destination becomes the real reward, the net final destination.

Well, we'll see.

JBelle
Bellemaison
The 'Kan EWA