Note: This morning I gave this reflection as part of a service on transitions at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia. To view the YouTube video, click here.
In my early twenties when I studied women’s self defense and then karate, one of my favorite t-shirts was a sky blue muscle shirt that had the Chinese character for crisis. This character shares characteristics with the symbol for opportunity. This was the early eighties.
I have no idea what happened to this particular t-shirt, but the saying stayed in my mind.
Undoubtedly it was something that fueled me as I studied martial arts and became a self-defense instructor to women — and also to people of all genders with intellectual disabilities.
My students showed great progress. They held their heads up high and looked people in the eye. They defined the space around them. They connected with the life force inside of them — called “Kiai,” a Japanese word used in Karate which describes the shout delivered for the purpose of focusing all of one’s energy into a single movement. In studying self-defense, they were becoming more self confident.
Many were transforming from former victims into survivors and thrivers. They were healing.
I took pride in being their teacher. We were on the journey together.
I have long known that change is good. Not only is it good, it is necessary and unavoidable.
“Change is the only constant in life,” as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus is quoted as saying.
My delightfully progressive late aunt (my mother’s sister) was known to say to her more conventional relatives (mainly her husband and her son): “The universe is always changing and so am I.”
Change is necessary — but it also can be scary.
Personally I have found that in that scary-space — in the free fall over the abyss — it is possible to do the necessary good work that reinvention requires.
One thing that I have learned over the years, is that things rarely go back to the way they were as much as we might want that.
I tend to stay in the present — which is good in many ways — but the downside is that I can forget some of the spiritual lessons that I’ve learned in decades past.
Remembering that change is good and necessary is definitely one of those things.
We tend to expect things to last forever. Perhaps this is part of the survival instinct that is wired into us.
In my last major transition, I went from spending my days in a cubicle to doing my best writing — and perhaps to being my best self. I had been in a high-stress job for five and a half years and my major saving grace was that I was using my days off to pursue my own writing. This also may have contributed to burn out.
Now I knew that this was an opportunity for me and my writing but still I suffered from severe anxiety when I was laid off.
But because of this experience, I know what it feels like to walk through life like a robot. I understand job stress and burnout.
I recently had dinner with an old friend who is also a retired therapist who tactfully said to me, “You just weren’t taking care of yourself when you were in that job.”
That’s an understatement and I shudder to think of what may have happened to me if I hadn’t changed everything.
Fast forward to five years later, and I am still reinventing myself, but I am much stronger — in large part thanks to yoga — with our music director Jane Hulting — and a spiritual practice that includes attending worship here at Restoration. In yoga, Jane often quotes from the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron, in particular from her book When Things Fall Apart in which she writes:
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that’s life.”
Her words bear repeating:
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that’s life.”
Janet Mason, author 