Same as it ever was.
Same as it never was?
Well I think it’s more complicated than anything that can be reduced to a trite and familiar cultural idiom: the more things change the more they stay the same? Hmm…
Heraclitus says, “You can not step twice into the same river. ” King Solomon contends “There is nothing new under the sun.” Lately I find myself somewhere in the middle, wading out into a dizzying current that feels like change on all sides, yet staring at the sun thinking there is something strangely familiar about all of this.
I have been thinking about scrapping this blog for more than a while now. I have been thinking about a reboot: a new url, a new site name, a new direction. This is all a very surfacey representation of what is going on deep within me.
In the last two years life has consisted of a swift and often bewildering array of changes. I became a father, twice! My daughter Rena turned two years old yesterday. And I can barely believe our son L.J. has been with us nearly half a year already. I rejoice in each new day with them. Part of me can scarcely remember a time before them. Each day brings new joys. But part of me wakes each day with hopes and dreams, patterns and behaviors, insecurities and idiosyncrasies that I have had all of my life. Some of these things represent the best of me, things I hope to pass on to my children. My passion, my love for God, for words, for poetry, for rock & roll. But some of it consists of ways of thinking, feeling, reacting that I have spent a lifetime trying to rid myself of. Self absorption, self doubt, childish explosions of temper. Things a father would never hope to pass on.
In the last 18 months I have also lost over 200 lbs. After years of trying to no avail to lose weight, of spinning my wheels on a cycle of diet, minimal weight loss, depression, weight regain, I opted to have bariatric surgery. The decision came with the discovery that Erin was pregnant with Rena. I wanted to be able to run and play and keep up with my daughter. I entered a web of self discovery that included meetings with clinical psychologists, nutrition specialists, exercise specialists, as well as medical doctors. I realized that not only was my relationship to food out of order since childhood, since I used it to cope with depression (actually I think I already knew this) but I also discovered that I actually had quite a severe thyroid problem that exasperated my situation a great deal. Finding proper medication together with my surgery and several lifestyle changes has led to some outstanding results. I think that I naively thought one of these days I would wake up and be a different person than I have ever been before because of this all. Feelings of physical inadequacy – too fat, too ugly, too pale – surely these would just go away. But these were always symptomatic of something deeper, a deeper distrust of self, of others, of God. In many ways I am different. I am healthier physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. And in many ways I am the same insecure person in a smaller shell with less to protect me from the world I fear.
In the last couple of years I have experienced changes in relationships. Drifting. Growth, time, distance, circumstances see some relationships all but dissolve and others take significantly less priority than they once did. With at least one friendship a wall of irreconcilable differences was crashed into head on as we grew in very different ways. And at the same time new proximity, new interests, new challenges have brought with them new faces, new hearts to discover, new friendships to explore. And with the new comes familiar anxieties as well as joys. Haven’t I stepped in this river before? Haven’t I waded these waters with another pilgrim on this journey? And the inevitable, will this too come to an end?
In the last year I have finally found a church home, a place of worship and an ecclesial tradition to settle down in. It would probably be more accurate to say that through a long and meandering journey the tradition and the particular church body in many ways found me. Actually, bright and early tomorrow morning I meet with the elders in my congregation in the first step of a two year process to become a minister of word and sacrament in the Reformed Church in America. The Christian tradition, broadly speaking (all Christians everywhere from the Vatican to the snake handling congregation in the hills of Virginia and every ecclesial body in between) is about – among other things – community, community, community. The church, or to use the New Testament term, the ἐκκλησία. The assembly. Assembled to participate in the good work God is doing in Christ. I have found my community. The community to lead me to guide me. The body for me to wrestle with: to agree with, to disagree with, to find our way together, ever reforming. And this is good. And this is really what any church I have ever been a part of was doing, succeeding and failing at it as we always do. Following the Spirit and succumbing to the game of church politics. No group I have been a part of has been exempt for either. All things are new, and yet much is familiar.
And here I am, 3/4 of the way through my seminary journey. In the last couple of years I have learned a lot. I have been given valuable hermeneutic and exegetical tools to help better understand and explore scripture with the rest of the community. I have learned a lot about our history, the history of Christians at various times and places, spanning the globe and two millennia. A history full of saints and sinners like me, like you, like us. If we are careful students of history, sometimes we can avoid repeating our mistakes and better formulate better solutions, even articulate better questions. But the task and privilege of the seminarian, of the pastor is the same as it is for those in the pews, the same as it was when I came forward in to the front of a little Baptist church when I was 7 years old. Together we grasp and grope, stumble and sometimes… sometimes soar to new heights. All the while we cry, in the words of an old favorite hymn, draw me nearer, nearer precious Lord!
Maybe sometimes we just need a new way to talk about the things we hold dear. And sometimes we really do need to change what we cling to: those behaviors or attitudes we don’t want to pass to our children, make changes to improve our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. In this time in between times -while God is making all things new in Christ and old ways of living and thinking continue to call for our attention – I am reminded of one of the earliest prayers I learned: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
While I have been fumbling to know the difference, I have been often left without the words to express whats been going on inside. I am coming to learn this is not always a bad thing for someone with a tendency to talk too much and listen too little. I have been trying to do a lot of listening lately: to God, to my wife, to my kids, to my professors, my friends old and new. And I think I am ready to talk again.
I have woke up many days to find myself in beautiful (seminary) housing, with a beautiful wife (and children) and found myself asking how did I get here? To continue shamelessly ripping off the talking heads, the answer is in part that life is the same as it ever was. But the river of change is also very real. It must be in a world with a God who says “I make all things new!” This is the sound of one discontent to Let the days go by, one refusing to let the water hold me down, one learning to adapt, to change, to pray, to love, to know when to paddle with all I have against the current and when follow it where the Spirit may be leading.
Shalom,
Wayne
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