I admit it: I’m more likely to be bothered by change, or the prospect of change, than to be enthusiastic  about it. It’s instructive that the first version of the preceding sentence read “the threat of change” rather than “the prospect of change.”  ‘Nuf said.  Change makes me uneasy; it tends to ratchet up my anxiety.  Major changes that affect me directly call out the four horsemen of my own little apocalypse: clammy, queasy, sleepless and shaky. Even if it’s “good” change, it’s far easier for me to see the possible risks inherent in it than to whole-heartedly celebrate its promises. Not always, to be sure, but typically.

Sometimes, for some of us, change can’t come fast enough. I recall how much my daughter, when she was a middle-schooler and even into high school, disliked her unusual first name (“Hinda,” named after her four-greats grandmother). She let it be known repeatedly that as soon as she was old enough, she was going to court to have it changed. Then she graduated college and got her first job in the public relations field, which would become her lifelong profession. She soon discovered that having a somewhat unusual name, one that people remembered easily, was quite an asset.

Those who are dissatisfied with the current administration are eager for the November elections with the possibility of inaugurating a new era in American government. Others, however, are concerned about what such a change might bring.

The secular humanists in our own congregation want change, while others are content with how things are. For some among us, the prospect of having two services appears as a vast field of possibility, an exciting new development in the life of our beloved community. Others worry about what may happen to the beloved community they value the way it is.

We all experience changes in our individual lives as well, some welcome, some less so. Biologists tell us, in fact, that every seven or so years, our cells have undergone a complete turnover, so that we do not have a single cell within us that we had seven years previously. Children are born; previous generations die. We move. Kids go off to college or find a partner. We or someone we love becomes ill or recovers from what may have seemed an impossible situation. Sometimes change comes slowly, in a controlled fashion, with our assent and cooperation. Other times, it drops on us without warning, leaving us reeling in its wake.

Humanism in its various forms offers ways for living creatively with  change, celebrating the pleasant changes, living through the less pleasant ones, and accepting the uncertainty that all change brings. Our own internal resources are greater than we know, and their true greatness becomes apparent as we are challenged. We are also surrounded by a community of others. None of us faces change alone. Family, friends, and helping professionals can all strengthen, support, and guide us. Humanism encourages us to use our capacity for clear-headed thought to examine our expectations and how we think about events in our lives, to see if how we think about change may make our response to it less effective and increase our distress. We can steer our course through it the best way we know how, confident that we have the capacity to do so.

Humankind’s various communities of faith and spiritual paths suggest other ways we can deal with change, even welcome it. For some who believe in a personalized God/Goddess, the confidence that this being is in control, that nothing happens outside the will of the divine being, provides comfort, hope and stability. For others, while the divinity does not and cannot control everything, we are assured of her/his presence with us in whatever we face. For some people who don’t believe in a personal God/Goddess, there is an intelligence and order built into the universe that serves somewhat the same function in a less personal way.

For many Hindus, there is an underlying changelessness that grounds the change we experience all around us. Change is in fact illusory in a sense. To the extent that we can be in touch and in tune with this ultimate changelessness, “that which is not born and does not die,” we realize that change, and the disruption it can bring, are but maya, part of the illusion that distracts and upsets us. It is not real, nor does it touch the inmost core of who we are.

Most Buddhists, by contrast, don’t believe there is anything changeless that underlies change. Everything changes, nothing remains the same, and the way to live well in the face of that is simply to accept it. The way to do so is detachment, which is not indifference, but means neither grasping nor pushing against reality as it presents itself to us. We gain nothing by struggling against it or wishing it were not so. Taoists in general agree with this, interpreting change as the pulsing flow of the Tao between the two poles of yin and yang.

Perhaps it is both, change and constancy. “The wind of change forever blown across the tumult of our way” (hymn # 183), and “We are going, heaven knows where we are going, but we know within. And we will get there, heaven knows how we will get there, but we know we will” (hymn #1020). Meanwhile, may we accept each day on this fascinating journey we call life as a gift.

Rev. Julia