"Transformation and Change"

"Transformation and Change"

There is a difference between change and transformation. Change happens when something old dies and something new begins. I am told that planned change is as troublesome to the psyche as unplanned change, often more so. We feel manipulated, forced, and impute it to some evil authorities, the change agents! But change might or might not be accompanied by transformation of soul. I’m afraid it is usually not. If change does not invite personal transformation, we lose our souls. Such is the modern malaise. We mass-produce neurotics and narcissists because there are so few medicine men and healing women and Spirit guides to walk us through transformation.

At times of change, the agents of transformation must work overtime, even through few will hear them. The ego would sooner play victim or too-quick victor than take the ambiguous road of transformation. We change-agents need a simple virtue: faith. It still is the rarest of commodities because it feels like nothing, at least nothing that satisfies our need to know, to fix, to manage, to understand. Faith goes against the grain.

Transformation in times of change is the exception, but it is also the norm. Deutero-Isaiah was written in exile; Francis of Assisi emerged as the first clocks turned time into money; and the martyrs of El Salvador spilled their blood during the last gasps of colonial and economic oppression. Nothing new seems to happen except when the old dies. But the old does not die gracefully: It always takes hostages. These have the potential of building bridges to the next coming of Christ.

from Radical Grace, “A Transitional Generation”