Change. Such a small, insignificant word--and yet it's imbued with so much covert meaning. I wonder how many of us actually look forward to it. How many of us swim in ambivalence, alternating between euphoria at the prospect of a new adventure and absolute terror at the prospect of jumping headfirst into the unknown? Even change on a small scale can be daunting. I remember being in grade school, and how the start of every academic year brought with it a slew of anxiety-induced nightmares, along with qualms about which bus I'd ride and who I'd sit beside; in addition, of course, to those back-to-school shopping sprees, necessary because what self-respecting female would dare cross that school threshold in September wearing the same dress she'd worn in June? The list goes on. And on. There were always a slew of mornings when I'd wake up with a pounding heart and a sick feeling in my stomach (too many chili cheese fries AGAIN?!); a slew of bittersweet late-summer evenings spent staring out at a slowly-sinking sun, knowing shorter, colder, harder days were imminent. Even in college the anxiety, this aversion to change, persisted. Would I have another 8 AM class, and if I did would my professor turn a blind eye to my pajama bottoms and scraggly morning-hair? Would "oral participation" REALLY make up 20% of my grade? Would this be the year Michael Near would FINALLY only teach courses I'd already taken? Oh, the horror!
Maybe I'm alone in this. Maybe I'm the only one who hates change about as much as I hate spiders--or rising gas prices. But I don't think so.
I think we're all at least somewhat wary of change. I think it's human nature to seek out the familiar, to stick to what we know. I mean, sure, the grass might LOOK greener on the other side, and sure, it might actually BE greener, but if given the opportunity would we REALLY leave our own little patch of dry tumbleweed and stake our flag on that lovely strip of astroturf on the other side? As people we're good at inventing excuses. Reasons why we can't; why it won't work; why we're doomed to failure so why even bother. It's not that we're lazy. It's not that we're sado-masochists bent on staying in the worst-possible circumstance just for the hell of it--but it is, I believe, at least in part, a form of self-sabotage. It's learning to be content with the hand life's dealt us--even when it's a terrible hand--rather than looking at ourselves in the mirror and seeing that we could be more, that we DESERVE to be more, that one day we WILL be more if only we don't give up on ourselves. It's staying stuck in the same bad job or the same bad marriage year after year after year, simply because we're scared of the possibilities that would be open to us if we acknowledged that no, we don't have to live this way and yes, we can be that man or woman God intended us to be. There's salvation for us after all.
But how many of us want to be saved? Isn't it true that sometimes we'd rather drown than swim to the life raft floating in the distance, discovering along the way that we're stronger than we thought, that there's muscle and power and determination beneath all those layers of self-doubt and self-hate; that maybe drowning was easy but swimming reminds us that we're young and vital and ALIVE? Salvation is a tricky thing because it requires loving ourselves more than we love a static image of ourselves--an image constructed piece by piece by what Mom thought we were and what Dad said we'd amount to and what every single person and event in our lives has taught us to believe is true about who we are, what we're worth, what we deserve. Accepting salvation is accepting a self that is UNMARKED...our past, our family, our friends, our circumstances can no longer tell us who we are. Or who we aren't. Only we can do that. Salvation is metamorphosis, and at the heart of metamorphosis is, of course, CHANGE.
There's just one singular difference. Salvation isn't change that happens TO us. It's not inevitable, it isn't forced upon us, we're not unwilling recipients or ill-fated victims. It's not your dad's remarriage, the break-up that left you devastated and forever branded with a badge of shame, the transition from happy-go-lucky child to sulky teen. Salvation is change that we precipitate. It's proactive, it's self-indulgent, it's the inevitable next-step of a self that has been reclaimed.
Maybe salvation happens naturally when we finally assume responsibility for what we are, for how we live--or don't live--our lives. Maybe salvation is nothing more than a decision to live in the present. A decision to stop trying to fix ourselves, and perhaps even realize that we were never broken, not the way we imagined--that all along there was something of holiness and divinity and God's very essence in us, something unnamable but beautiful, incomprehensible but perfect.
We are perfect. We are divine. We are timeless, eternal. And that, ultimately, is what salvation IS: "saving" the magnificent, resplendant, absolutely SCINTILLATING self we've hidden away, or let others bury beneath the avalanche of their reproach or disapproval or malice. Salvation is the butterfly emerging from its warm, familiar cocoon; or better yet, the caterpillar who finally, finally accepts the truth of what it can be, of what it already innately IS.
Salvation is change without the terror. Without fear, anxiety, or self-reproach. Salvation is, simply put, living in God's perfect will--and that, of course, means remembering that we're animate beings because we have in us that which sustains us: God's mighty breath. We are, therefore, more than the sum of everything that's ever happened to us--all life's injustices, all the ways in which we were cheated out of happily-ever-after--more, so much more. We are loved. We are lovely. And we are worth saving.
