Spirituality at Work: August 2009

The More Things Change

By Woodeene Koenig-Bricker

Dealing with change, or tryin to, is something we all have to face all the time. We get a new pastor or principal or boss and suddenly we are forced to examine all the things we've been doing on autopilot. We may feel threatened or discombobulated or just sort of on edge. Or we may be energized, enthused and excited.

In either case, change means that we have to alter our behavior. So how do you make the most of change? Especially the kind of change that upsets rather than enthralls you?

For me, it helps to look for the "big picture" since most of the time, the changes are in the details. For instance, one year our new pastor changed the Mass times. From the uproar, you would have thought that the entire parish was going to fall in apostasy because Masses were now at 9 and 11 instead of 8 and 10. While it was true peoples' routines were altered, we still had the Eucharist and it was still being offered twice on Sunday morning. The truly important remained. It was just the details that had been altered. I find that most of the time the changes I struggle with are like this. It's the superficial of my routine, my plans, my way that I have to re-examine in the light of change. It's not the truly essential that has been altered. It's just the way I receive the essential.

Sometimes the changes that disturb me the most are really signs that I need to examine my spiritual underpinnings more closely because they highlight areas where I am putting my own desires above all else. I don't want to be inconvenienced and I certainly don't want to be challenged. I'd rather go on along, happy in the status quo.

But all things must change in order to grow. Once we stop changing, we also stop living. So even if my first response to change is to resist, I am trying to learn to stop, take a deep breath and ask what lesson I can learn from the change. Even if the lesson is merely to allow change to happen, that can be a spiritual growth marker as well.

So this month I ask you:

What changes are happening in your life? Your parish?
Are you resisting any of them?
What lessons might there be in accepting the changes with grace?

Perhaps the very best thing we can do when faced with change is to pray the famous Serenity Prayer -- not the short version we all know, but the entire actual prayer:

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change

Courage to change the things I can

and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life