Metropolitan Community Church
Guerneville, California
Article published in the Forestville Gazette, August 2004
On Transformation
I just returned from a second trip to the
I have become much keener on listening to the stories of the people who respond to crisis situations with a commitment to create change. Last year, with great interest, I read about UC Berkeley's Center for the Development of Peace and Well-Being. It is a place where researchers study what makes people get along with each other and why.
First is the study of the positive emotions, such as love, awe, admiration, hope, kindness, and gratitude, and how these emotions help individuals in times of duress, by enhancing personal well-being and relational health. A second area pertains to the practices that promote individual harmony, including play, art, wisdom, and narrative (the stories people tell about their lives). A third emphasis looks at the person, and traits like tolerance, kindness, compassion, and civility, that promote peace within the individual.
While a part of me wonders why we need to study such things, one needs only to glance around at the larger world view. I am relieved that we are devoting time to determining how we can pursue and maintain positive feelings that can bring about personal and global liberation. I want to hear the words of Renee Weber, a scientist who believes that the scientist and the mystic are both driven by the same principle; the assumption that unity, not separation lies at the heart of our world and that it can be discovered and experienced by human beings. I want to study the work of Chris Bache who wonders if humanity today is in a period of acute purification, like the one a spiritual practitioner undergoes before making the final transition to deep spiritual awakening. From one perspective it looks like our world is falling apart - from another perspective it can be seen to be giving birth.
I think when we emerge from a place where we take full responsibility for what is within us, we will then see the outward evidence of what we produce in our world. When we begin to take on that responsibility, perhaps we will refrain from waiting for something greater to intervene in history or in our lives. My teenagers say that life is easy as a teen, when you can still expect to be taken care of, can also complain when you do not quite
like how something happens, and yet don't have to feel responsible for it. Perhaps taking on that responsibility, as it is for a teen, is the first step toward the greatest liberation possible.
I think it will be our greatest challenge and our saving grace. It will put us on a spiritual path where deep transformation is likely to happen. It requires an ongoing commitment to be willing to change, to love, to live peacefully and non-violently with one another, to reflect upon ourselves when we miss the boat and open up to change and to change again.
Rumi says . . ."even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, come, come again". I am somewhat of a reactive person and I think it is no coincidence that my partner and I are living right now with three teenage boys and two teenage girls just around the corner. I got the perfect learning ground to become a more peaceful and less reactive person, and I tell you it is a really painful process to watch myself be short with them and then struggle to find a way to open up again. But over time, I also notice moments where I can tell myself not to react, to let it go and to stay in a more loving connection. I realize that they may be the only ones capable of allowing me the grace of this transformation. Those who are difficult for you to get along with, can be your greatest teachers.
In Aikido, a martial art, students practice over and over not to get of balance, to stay grounded. One of the students asked their sensei (teacher): "How come you never get of balance?" The sensei answered: "I get of balance all the time but I come back to center so quickly that you can no longer see it".
That - is the practice. In
More then ever, though, the world needs people who do not look away or fall silent, people who are willing to let themselves be changed and transformed by the tragedies or joys they see around them. Whatever transformation one makes possible in life, becomes a possibility in the world. Whatever transformation we make possible in our community living together, becomes a possibility of transformation for other communities in the world. This, I think, is the highest liberation possible.
Rev. Elisabeth Middelberg