MAKING CHANGE

Hi There !

So, it's a whole lot easier to make change at the cash register

than at the many registrations of change

we have to negotiate out here on the street of everyday life.

The currency and valuations are one heck of a lot more costly.

For instance.

My parents were driving away.

I was all alone.

I was also one scared teenager.

I knew absolutely no one at the boarding school.

It was just me and my trunk at the door..

Thank God for " Grippy."

That's really what everyone called him.

He was a short, quirkie, kind, leprechaun-like upper classman.

He took me in tow and said, "Don't worry. I'll show you around and get you started."

Grippy's goodness greased the skids of a huge change for me,

a change that turned out to be very much for the better.

Being at that boarding school changed me from  a confused, conflicted adolescent

into a stabilized, strong young man, eager and ready for adult life,

well, until the next major life change anyway.



So how about you?

What's it been like for you to "make change" in your life?

I'll bet the changes you've had to negotiate are as varied as  they have been for all of us.

Change presents in all sorts of denominations:

fear, joy, expectation, pain, happiness,

surprise, ecstasy and multiples more.

I'll also bet that even  welcome changes have come with a payment plan,

not just a bit of loose change either.



Change there is, welcome or resisted.

Why?

Why can't we just work hard, get things lined up and settle down?

Well, change tells us, " You're not finished yet."

Easy or hard, change underscores that we are in process, that we are evolving.

Some folks get it, go along with it, and  move more and more into an evolving fullness,

one that helps society to do the same..

Other folks don't get it, or don't want to get it,

They just slow down the progress. the evolution for themselves and society.

They try to shut down the change making that is integral to life and its expansion.

They want life to be a settled account.

Well, it isn't and they can't.

I guess that's what the scripture from the Christian Tradition means when it notes,

"...for here we have no lasting city..." ( Hebrews 13:14)

Individually and as a people we are invited to be on the move.

Our destiny, our destination, I suspect is not so much  a static, safe final condition or place.

Rather it is an unending "aborning," a continuous breaking through to, not a fulfillment,

but to unending, ever unfolding  Fullness.

Name it as we will, Nirvana, Bliss, Heaven,  The Omega Point,

it's an ever opening, progressive tense adventure.

Happily it's beyond our describing at this stage of our growing up.

And that's what it is - growing up and up and up and up.

We are like a plant reaching for the sun

and offering it the exquisite flowering that we are becoming.

Yet, at times change feels like being short changed, a loss, a downward thing.

That's when the plant is going through some needed root work.

We 'd rather take a pass on this kind of change.

But, as down and dirty as it is, it does root us more firmly and deeply for further flowering.

So we fuss and fumble, grope and grow and glow as we "make change."

Looked at another way,  we are a pilgrim people, a lot like the ancient Israelites.

They were on the move from slavery to freedom in  a Promised Place.

With them, let's take to heart the poetic promise of change:

                    I am about to do a new thing:

                    now it springs forth,
  
                    do you not perceive it?

                    I will make a way in the wilderness
  
                    and rivers in the desert."

                                                        Isaiah 43:19



Though we don't always understand it,

we are invited to "make change,"

change that happily amounts to

A Change For The Better.



Glad we can be together like this.

Every blessing!

In God's Dear Love,

    John Frank





AN AFTERWORD


Well, really quite a few of them.

Don't forget,

I was a pastor and a professor for years of words!!!



If you have the time and interest,

I'd really like to tell you about Christopher and me.

Christopher is thirteen.

I am a lot of thirteens, six of them minus one year.

Even with a year differential like that,

we really like each other

and share a good bit.

For starters, we share April 30th. as our common birthday.

Every year we wish each other well on that day of aliveness.

These days we are sharing Big Time Change!!

The specifics are age appropriate,

but the dynamic of change is so similar and definitely shared.

Christopher has recently stepped into puberty.

I continue to take more and more steps, often stumbles, into old age.

Our bodies are changing in often surprising, sometimes confusing, and yet truly wonderful ways.

Change in sense of self, social position, relationships, abilities, powers,

responsibilities, emotions, life in God, interests, are fast tracked for both of us.

Christopher has lost his childhood and is gaining manhood.

I have lost the vigor of former times and am gaining peace being in Being.

Christopher will have to deal with all sorts of "hormonal happenings," and the zits that go with them

I'll more and more have to deal with a growing variety of aches and pains and slowness of everything

Christopher has years and years in front of him.

I've got a timeless forever in front of me.

We both are changing into a new kind of aliveness.

Please join me in holding Christopher in prayer.

He makes this old man happy, happy that he is changing into the kind of man so needed today.

Pardon the play on words, but Christopher and I  are  making changes that make more than cents .

They make a lot of sense - definitely a change for the better!!

                                             ******************


Here are some Meditation Markers that might help as we ponder and pray our way forward,

and the changes that means.




There are two rules on the spiritual path: Begin and Continue.

                                                                               Sufi Saying


The ocean refuses no river.

                                                                                Sufi Chant


 For surely I know the plans I have for you says the Lord,

 plans for your welfare and not for harm,

 to give you a future with hope.

                                                                           Jerimiah 29:11


 Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit

 within you; and I will remove the heart of stone

 from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

                                                                             Ezekiel 36:26


What do sad people have in common?

It seems they all build a shrine to the past

and they go there and do a strange wail and worship.

What is the beginning of happiness?

It is to stop being so religious like that.

                                                                                        Hafiz




                         







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