Making Change

Matt Alspaugh

Introduction

They say that 'change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.' 

Then there's that old one where a Buddhist monk, visiting New York City for the first time in many years, walked up to a hot dog vendor, handed him a twenty dollar bill, and said, "Make me one with everything."

The vendor pocketed the money, and handed the Buddhist monk his hot dog. The monk, after waiting for a moment, asked for his change. The vendor looked at him and said, "Change comes from within." With a wistful smile, the monk walked away.
Don’t we wish it would it be that easy?

Situations

Melissa Smith organized a very successful event here at the church yesterday for new faculty at YSU and other newcomers were just moving into the area. I spoke with them briefly on the external change of moving and starting new jobs. I could quite relate to their experiences, as I was going through the same thing myself. 

This is the third household move Liz and I have made in four years. We've gotten good at this in some ways. We saved all our moving boxes from the last move, and though we gave some away, and replaced them, we had exactly the right number of boxes for our possessions. We know our stuff fills every square inch of a 26 foot Penske rental truck. 

But there are some aspects of these geographic transitions that are always surprises. The combination of sadness and loss and hope and adventure is a complex mixture.  I found myself moving slowly at times through the relocation process, ruminating, trying to raise up those mixed feelings, to understand them. Hard goodbyes. Incomplete projects, now clearly abandoned. Dreams and visions of 'how its gonna be', in this new setting.  Reconnections with old, old friends by telephone or facebook, the kind of connections that seem to emerge only in transitional times.

I realize that this physical sort of transition, moving, is only one of a whole class of transitions we face in life. Changing jobs, or careers. New relationships, romance, a child or a grandchild. Separation or divorce. Illness. Losing a job. Losing mobility, Losing mental acuity. Change is with us all the time. Someone we know is always in transition.

Three Phases of Transitions

William Bridges, in his well-regarded book, Transitions [1], suggests that life transitions have three components, an Ending, a Neutral Zone, and a New Beginning. According to Bridges, all thre components have to occur, and in their correct order, for change to complete. 

Ending

Take endings. "We move among the things we thought we wanted," Linda Pastan, writes [2]. We move among these things and now they want us, and of course we are realizing that we no longer want them. This is a time of ending. 

Often this is an unconscious awareness.  We do not feel we had any control over the ending, and in fact we often subtly bring it about.  We unexpectedly lose a job. A relationship ends. Only later, do we realize we did contribute to these endings.  Perhaps we had detached from the job long before, perhaps we stepped out of our identity with the relationship.  In other cases, we think we have brought on an ending for all the right reasons, we've made a solid and rational case, and only later do we realize that the ending is much bigger than all that, and meant much more to our life process as a whole.

Neutral Zone

Then we wander in the wilderness, perhaps for the proverbial 40 days, being tested by Satan, as Jesus did, perhaps for longer, being tested by our own demons. Often it is in this neutral zone that we suffer the most. We grieve the losses brought by the ending, we rail against the bad hand life has dealt us. And there may be follow-on effects. It is well-known that risk of illness increases when we are stressed by situations that involve losses.  And even when this time is not so much of a struggle, we feel a sense of confusion, of not knowing. 

We may get clues. "And what we want appears in dreams, wearing disguises", the poet tells us. We may go through our day, living very conventionally, not remembering our dreams, but they remember us. And for each of these dreams: it is there all day, as an animal is there under the table, as the stars are there. 

New Beginning

And then somehow, we find our way out of the wilderness. The mask comes off, the dream is revealed. A new beginning is now possible. Quite likely, we have a new vitality, and new clarity in what is before us. Often things just seem to click into place. We look back, and see the ending in a new way, our transition is complete.

And the biggest transition of all -- death?  Maybe we see it too as an ending with whatever marvelous beginning fits for us. Tagore tells us, "Now when I think of my coming death, I find life's song in the star-songs of the night, in rise of curtains and new morning light, in life reborn in fresh surprise of love." [3]

When These Phases are not Distinct

What happens when we're not aware of this pattern of endings, neutral time, and beginnings? Or, worse, when events conspire, or we conspire, not to allow this pattern to unfold, to de-velop, in its natural order?

When we are not aware, or try to short-circuit the process of transition, the suffering is likely to be greater. Endings are more painful, beginnings are more troubled. I've noticed this, with my relocations. I've done enough of them now that I almost have a data set of transitions from which I can draw statistically valid conclusions.

In such geographic moves, if I have time to say goodbye to a place, to friends, and intentionally create time to be in-between, then when I arrive at the new place, I am more energized and prepared to embrace the new experiences. 

If I don't take this time, perhaps because the ending is incomplete, maybe some final project hangs over my head, or I choose not to say the hard goodbyes, things can be harder.  I find surprising emotions coming up, at inopportune times, or I find myself emotionally disengaged and detached from the new situation.  A kind of tunnel vision comes on, as there is just too much to take in and experience.  The spirit of beginning is just not present. 

Religious Communities and Transition

Religious communities have long known the nature of transition, and in transitional rituals, they provide for the ending, a neutral zone and a new beginning. I have a friend who, at mid-life, has decided to become a monastic, and is in his novitiate year with a Catholic community in rural Pennsylvania. He has described the very limited contact he is allowed with family and friends. Clearly, old forms of relationship must end, to make room for new.

More surprising to me was the limits placed on his work: he could do no more than five hours a week of work for the community or ministry outside the community. His time is devoted to study and reflection.  Obviously, he will have plenty of neutral zone time. I was glad to hear he still could keep his iPod, loaded with many hours of popular music.

In some ways, the time of Interim Ministry is an attempt to encourage the kind of transitional process that William Bridges described. The interim time is a kind of forced neutral zone, an in-between time for the congregation. The interim time allows people to grieve the loss of a previous minister, and work through the deeper meaning of that ministerial change.  It allows a congregation to begin to think about a new and different beginning, and to begin to create the possibility for that new beginning as it searches for a new minister.

I do not know whether your interim ministry experience last year fully engaged this transitional process. I do hope that you will recognize that my ministry will be different from Susan's or Martha's, simply because I am a different person, with a different way of being. And likewise, I'll try not to project my previous experiences onto First UU of Youngstown. I'll try not to say, 'at Jefferson we did this' or 'at Unity Unitarian we did that', at least not too much.

One of the suggestions that Bridges makes in his book to help work through the neutral zone is autobiographical journaling. Figure out a way to tell your story. Start from the beginning. Write out a timeline of your life. Even if you've done such memoir work before, it will often turn out different this time, and the variations will often be clues into what the nature of change will be for you this time.
In this same way, I'm really looking forward to the timeline and history telling exercise we will do this next Friday, with Joan Van Beacelere, our District Executive. I'm hoping we'll learn some things about what comes next, about what this current New Beginning for First UU of Youngstown looks like!

An Example: Healthcare

Sometimes in preparing a sermon, I find I need to speak about something only peripherally related to the theme of the sermon.  I'm called to say something, and so I make what one of my teachers called a 'left turn', and we head down some back road, hoping we might join up with the main road of the theme later on. Fasten your seatbelts...

I've been wondering whether some of the difficulty we've been having with national healthcare reform might be connected with this idea of transition. We are, after all, asking the American People to make a major change in how healthcare is delivered and paid for, something we've tried to accomplish unsuccessfully in the past. I've been struck by two things.

First, the stridency of the opposition, the level of fear-mongering, and the unwillingness to even come to the table and consider any changes from what currently exists. This is connected with larger dynamics in the political environment than we can consider here.

And second, the seeming disengagement of Americans who should be passionate about this issue. Americans who would both benefit personally, but also who see this as a large justice and equity issue, a matter of fairness. I've wondered why there is not more passion here!

When we are making change to something as big as how we deliver healthcare in this country, we should expect the same phases that we see in personal transitions. There has to be an ending, with all the pain and possibility that that represents. Then a neutral zone, and then a new beginning.

I wonder if part of the conundrum is that our leaders and ourselves have not adequately moved through these phases. Maybe the ending does mean the end of jobs and careers for some people in the insurance business, and we need to be honest about that. Maybe right now, some of us are stuck in a neutral zone, delaying legislation while we come to grips with what we as a nation really want. In this neutral zone, we should be doing deeper work to explore what we are changing. One way to do this work is by telling our stories.

Healthcare Stories

I hope you will indulge me with a little self-revelation. Show of hands.

Have you, or someone close to you, been denied insurance coverage?  I have!

Have you, or someone close to you, had exclusions placed on your coverage, because of pre-existing
conditions? I have!

Have you, or someone close to you, been unable to obtain or afford coverage at some time in your life?

Have you, or someone close to you, made life decisions, such as staying in a job or not relocating, due to health coverage concerns?

Right in this room are dozens of healthcare stories that could be told.  And as these stories get told by us and others throughout the country, we may begin to find the courage to make change in our healthcare system.

George Lakoff, the cognitive linguist who has explored language used in politics -- many of you may have read his book, "Don't Think of an Elephant", recently commented on this issue in an article, "The Policy-Speak Disaster for Healthcare" [4]. In essence, he says that those in favor of healthcare reform have framed the debate in terms of policies, the mechanics of the changes needed.  Those opposed have been able to frame the debate in terms of simpler narratives of loss: death panels, giving up your doctor, rationing of care. 

Call to Action

In terms of transition, I think the healthcare reform leadership is speaking in terms of new beginnings, while those opposed are speaking the language of ending. And we are really in the neutral zone.  Part of what we need to do, is to talk with our legislators, of our losses, our suffering, our mistreatment under the current system. This will help us all get through the ending.  You might want to share your story with your legislatures, or as I did, online, at awebsites such as CoverAllFamilies.org [5]  

Change and Transformation

We are invited in this community to embark on spiritual transformation. At least that is what our mission statement tell us, and I agree wholeheartedly with this.  But making change does not automatically bring transformation. 

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron tells us, "There is a very important distinction between transformation and change... Transformation doesn't happen by trying to change things. It comes only by seeing clearly."

My hope is that by living the transitions of our lives, by noticing the endings, the neutral times, and the new beginnings for what they are, and by allowing them to unfold in their own time, we may see more clearly.  Our eyes may focus at times on ourselves and our own transitions, at other times on our communities and their transitions, and at others, on our nation and the world.  With clear eyes, and careful reflection, we may begin to string the series of transitions that is our lives into the transformative life that we seek.

1 Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, 1980
2 "What We Want," by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening.
3 Hymn #191 SLT
4 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/20/769743/-The-PolicySpeak-Disaster-for-Health-Care
5 http://www.coverallfamilies.org