Change?

I recall a cartoon which I saw many years ago.  It depicted a rear view drawing of “Adam and Eve” as they were leaving the Garden of Eden. 

One is saying to the other, “It seems that we are entering a time of transition”.

The myth of Adam and Eve aside, we humans have ever had to face transition.  

Change is one of the “built in” factors for the universes, and for our own little planet, with its mountains, oceans, plants, birds, insects, fish and animals etc., etc., etc.  In the best of evolutionary terms this change is called adaptation.

We human animals have ambivalence about change. It summons our best and worst reactions: e.g.

1.    We laud and welcome it when we believe ourselves to be the authors of change.

2.  We resent and resist change when we realise that it is being imposed on us by the oligarchs of politics, and of big business.

3. We scarcely understand the changes which “nature/evolution” determine.

4.  We often long for things to change, but simultaneously hope that they will stay the same.

My Rector at St. Boniface Church on Siesta Key, Sarasota, FL is about to retire.  He has been the Rector of St. B’s for twenty years.

Change is at hand!

My reaction to his retirement is ambivalent.

On the one hand I cannot imagine St. B’s without him.  He is a fantastic human being, and a generously minded pastor.

On the other hand his impending retirement has caused me to think about all the ways in which St. B’s has disappointed, angered or frustrated me.

I am both fearful and joyful.   Such is the nature of change.