Lift Off

Of all of the holidays - even including my birthday and Christmas and other special days when I get gifts - New Year's is always my favorite.

For the last ten years, I have celebrated the turning of the year with a quiet, reflective kind of party that a dear friend introduced me to back when I lived in Massachusetts. It began as an alternative to what he saw all around him and it quickly grew into a much-anticipated annual event among family and friends. We gathered together in the living room of his house - just six of us that first year - my friend surrounded us with magazines and catalogs and art supplies, handed each of us a piece of poster board, a pair of scissors, and a glue stick, and suggested that we make a poster of our hopes for the new year. He said we could put anything on it that we wanted - a picture of the perfect pair of new shoes that we wished for, poems and phrases that encapsulated our desire for more peace or more play in our lives, images and words that we could not yet explain but that called to us in some way - he encouraged us to put it all down on the paper and let go of our judgments - just let the pictures and the words wash over you and place on the paper all that you desire.

I began reluctantly, not knowing exactly what it was that I wanted, slightly fearful of identifying it so clearly, and certainly not all that interested in placing my desires boldly on a poster that my friends would want to see. But I began all the same, and before long I was ripping out images and words and keeping an eye out for phrases like "free movie tickets," and I created my first dream board that snowy January afternoon as we sat in the living room drinking hot chocolate and eating my friend's famous concoction of Frito Pie.

The party has grown considerably now - it stretches far beyond the circle of those original six friends and with all of us spread out in different areas of the country - we've each found ourselves hosting an annual Dream Board Party of our own. I still surround people with magazines and scissors and glue sticks. I still ask people to go ahead and put the things and ideas they desire down on paper. I still serve hot chocolate and Frito Pie.

There are always things on my dream board that I cannot understand until after they happen, hints and intuitions that make sense only in retrospect. That is the way of so many beginnings, of lifting off in new directions. While I always want my new beginnings, my lift offs to be simple and clear - a decisive move on the chess board of life - I've been learning that regardless of how I may want things to be, that is usually not how they are.

Navigating the near constant change in our lives requires a willingness to let the natural process of transition take place. Transition is a process that embodies more than just a situational change or event, more than a decisive move on the chess board of life - it is the process that occurs in our lives when we let go of the way things used to be and embrace the way that things become - it happens naturally over time in our lives and the process of transition often takes shape in three phases - ending, the in-between time, and lifting off.

As we enter into the process of transition, any of these three phases - ending, the in-between time, or lifting off - can present a challenge - and unfortunately for my sometimes impatient self - we can never know at the outset how long each of these phases will take.

As one thing ends - whether it is a job or a relationship or living in a particular place - we struggle to let go of all that that person, place or thing meant in our lives - and we struggle to let go of the ways we used to understand ourselves. This is the time when I agree most with the French scientist Claude Bernard that, "It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning."[1] If we are successful in the first phase of the transition process, in the phase of ending, our identity loses shape temporarily and we enter into the in-between time.

This in-between time is often the most frightening phase of the transition process and it is the phase I am most tempted to try to avoid or take a short cut through. Characterized by chaos, confusion, exhaustion, a desire to turn back the clock and make a different decision and the potential for intense creativity - this in-between time involves letting go of old ways of being and of knowing the world and ourselves and holding open a space for a new, yet unimagined way. In this in-between time, the old way is lost and the new way hasn't quite stepped in to fill its place yet.

A little over a month ago or so, I told the story of when I left Massachusetts to attend seminary in Chicago. Preparing to leave the life I had known, I laid out most of my belongings on the front lawn of my apartment complex - I sold my books, my furniture, my car, and all of the clothing items that I had decided looked "un-ministerial." I packed up a small moving truck with myself, my now few belongings, and my cats and headed across the country. As I entered Chicago - my rural, small-town, even suburban self started got more and more uncomfortable. We passed factories and smoke stacks and housing complexes - the noise and the smell and the pollution got denser and denser and there was not a mountain or river in sight. When we arrived at the tiny, dirty, dingy apartment that would be my home for the next several years, I locked myself in the bathroom with my three cats and cried. I cried while my friends unloaded the boxes and brought them upstairs and I cried on and off for much of the next several months. For me, those moments were the in-between time. The time when I had left everything I knew behind, and the new beginnings with all of their potential and possibility hadn't yet taken hold.

This in-between time, the neutral zone, as transition expert William Bridges calls it, is the source of genuine new beginnings, the chaotic spring that can revitalize and inaugurate a new order of things.[2] The in-between time can be both a painful and exciting experience, a time when we need more rest than usual, more forbearance than we'd like, a time when greater attention and gentle care is called for. I would dare to say that this church, as an institution, is just beginning to peek out from the in-between time.

In the course of a transition, as the in-between time progresses, as old understandings fall away, shift, and take on different shapes - gradually a new pattern emerges and in the briefest of moments we begin to catch a vision of the new reality out of the corner of our eyes. When this new vision takes hold, when we come to understand ourselves and our world anew then we enter the third and final phase of our transition and the new beginning, the lifting off, occurs.

In times of transition, when we find ourselves emptied out of the familiar and the secure, this is the time when we are most open to the spiritual - when the conditions of chaos and unknown possibility allow for light to shine in on our souls. It is in these moments when we most often lean in to religion, to spiritual communities of people who can offer new and challenging perspectives, who can help us to remain open to the wonder and joy and creativity that is possible. When we are living in transition, we often search out people who can encourage and support us on our journeys - we look for the company of fellow travelers willing to risk who they are for who they might become.

Last new years, sitting on the living room floor surrounded by magazines and scissors and glue sticks and friends drinking hot chocolate and eating Frito Pie, I knew that I was about to enter the dreaded in-between time. With graduation from seminary fast approaching and interviews for ministry positions spread out around the country, it was clear that most of my external circumstances would be dramatically different in a year's time.

When I created last year's dream board I brought along my past experiences of transitions and I had ideas, of course, hopes and desires about how things would turn out - but as each phrase and image went on the board, I knew that I was entering a new frontier - a land of mystery and wonder made up of the stuff of my life and the passage of time that would take me places I could not predict. After all, hadn't it been just hours before that I had sat looking at last year's dream board - wondering how so much - how so many clearly positive and so many difficult and growth-filled things that I hadn't anticipated and probably never would have chosen - could have possibly happened in the short span of a year?

That element of surprise and mystery - the acknowledgement that the year will unfold with events and stories and possibilities that I cannot yet conceive of or even begin to comprehend - that is the element that draws me back to the dream board party year after year - and that is the element of transition and of the in-between time that I cannot live without despite the guaranteed discomfort, despite the not knowing and the change and all of the disruption - surprise and wonder and mystery - the creation of something completely new out of the stuff of the old - as we heard from the poet this morning - a golden beehive inside of our hearts making white combs and sweet honey out of our failures, a spring coursing the water of new life through the secret aqueduct of our bodies.

The possibility and potential that comes with change, the element of surprise and wonder and mystery, that is the ground of hope, and for me, that is the heart of God.

For hundreds of years theologians of all religious backgrounds have struggled with the concept of God. As science and reason and history reveal more and more about the nature of humanity and of the world - ideas of God and of no God have developed and shifted over time. In the last hundred years, a particular strain of thought known as process theology has come into vogue and then drifted out of view, heralded by some as the most dangerous theological idea of the 20th century.

Spurred on by the statement of Greek philosopher Heraclitus that no man could ever step into the same river twice, process theologians picked up the thread that not only nature and humanity are constantly changing, but that God is constantly changing as well.

In process theology, God is understood as a changeable, changing entity, existing in time with us, luring us towards the greater good but not controlling humanity or nature. Contrary to most theological systems, in process theology God is not purely good and God is not all-powerful or all-knowing. In this way of thinking, nothing is predetermined or predestined, not even God itself. Together with each other and with God we co-create the world - responding to the creative impulse within to move towards the good and the new.

For many process theologians, including Unitarian Universalist theologian Henry Nelson Wieman, "The only creative God we recognize is the creative event itself."[3] The four-fold process of the creative event in process theology is much like the process of transition we heard about earlier. In an experience of the creative event, first our old ways of understanding the world are challenged by some new input and we, in the in-between time, work to integrate these new understandings of the world with our past experience. The creative event allows for the making of meaning, the connection of people and organisms and the environment. It is a process of reorganization by which events (old and new) are integrated into a whole and a new, more unified meaning is made.[4] The understandings that emerge and the experiences that take place in the in-between time as new beginnings take hold can be so powerful, so re-organizing to our self-understandings and our lives, that they are understood not only as spiritual experiences, but as experiences of God itself.

For Wieman, God - the creative event - our interactions with each other and the world that cause a shift in perspective and a deeper sense of connection [5] - that is what transforms humanity as it cannot transform itself, saving us from self-destructive propensities and leading us to the best that human life can attain.[6] For Wieman, faith in this creative event is religious faith. In giving oneself entirely to the process of creativity and to creative interchange, standing ready at each and every moment to give oneself over to the unknowable that we might become- it is then that we are living deeply religious lives.

As the new year begins and all around us people are making the traditional resolutions to stop doing one thing entirely or start doing more of another, as we are drawn to the idea that we can make clear and direct plans, charting a course from point A here to point B there - where we really want to be - perhaps as feel ourselves pulled to the comforting concept that we know what is best - that we know how things will turn out if only we do our part - perhaps it is then that we can try a resolution of a different sort - the resolution to remain open to the possible, to the potential, to the unknowable path that is guaranteed to unfold in us as we make our way through the year.

Perhaps instead of resolving to go to the gym more or to lose ten pounds, we might keep ourselves open to the myriad ways that health calls to us in the days and weeks and months ahead - perhaps we might resolve to lean in, to allow ourselves to be lured when a friend invites us to learn how to make sushi, when a co-worker offers to walk with us at lunch, or when the sky breaks out in a brilliant shade of blue.

Perhaps instead of resolving to keep a cleaner house or a clearer desk, or for me a car free of old pop cans and newspapers, perhaps we might hold ourselves open instead to those interests and passions that truly call to us, responding quickly and clearly when the opportunity arises to spend an evening with loved ones, to make dinner for a friend, to curl up with a new book, or to walk a favorite trail when we spot the green tips of spring poking through the ground.

Perhaps in the midst of a culture that urges us to believe that we are in control, that we know what is best, that life follows a predictable, controllable course that we can navigate cleanly and with precision - perhaps in the midst of a culture that urges us to subscribe to such an absurd view of reality we can resolve instead to resist the voices we hear all around us and see our world through the eyes of reality, living deeply religious lives that respond to lure of the good and the possible, keeping ourselves open to all that is wondrous and mysterious and surprising.

Looking out over the edge of this new year with the horizon of so many new beginnings just out of sight - I wonder what lies ahead for me, for us, for this broken and beautiful world we live in. I have not yet made my dream board for 2005, but I hope that when I do, when I sit down in the living room, surrounded by magazines and scissors and glue sticks and friends, drinking hot chocolate and eating Frito Pie, I hope that I can take courage from the year before - from the knowledge that golden bees are creating white combs and sweet honey from my old failures - from the knowledge that wonder and mystery and surprise await amidst the discomfort of the in-between time - from the knowledge that outcomes I could not have anticipated or predicted will give way to new possibilities and to greater connection.

May we, in the turning of this year, find strength and comfort in experiences of the past and in our connection to one another. May we offer ourselves fully to the gift and the challenge that is transformation, leaning in to the discomfort of the in-between time, confident that who we are will give way to who we might become.

May it be so, and Amen.

Jen Crow, Acting Associate Minister
January 2, 2005

1. Bridges, William, The Way of Transition: Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments, 8. (New York: Perseus Publishing, 2001.)
2. Ibid, 185.
3. Wieman, Henry Nelson, The Source of Human Good, 7. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1946.)
4. Ibid., 56.
5. Ibid., 58-64.
6. Wieman, Henry Nelson, "My Intellectual Autobiography," 1. Originally published in Bretall, Robert W., "The Empirical Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman" (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963.) found at www.ubfellowship.ord/source/wieman_autobiography.html