We Must Not Resent Change, But Seek It!

Sunday, I mentioned in my sermon that Sue and I had visited Desmet, South Dakota on Sue’s Creativity Fellowship last summer.  We had driven through South Dakota once before when moving our family to Oregon and honestly, did not find it calling to us. When Kim Gastineau shared out of the silence and reminded me of the book, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris, I remembered reading that book for the first time many years ago.  I think back then I was fascinated by the movie Dances with Wolves and hoped it would give me insight into the spiritual draw of the Dakotas. Until Kim spoke, I had not really thought of the book – not even when traveling through Desmet.   

On Sunday night, I downloaded the book and decided to listen as I took a walk around my neighborhood. This time it was like reading a completely different book.  Once you have experienced a place, your eyes are opened to so much more. No longer is it just the landscapes you pass off the highway, but now you engage people, communities, and the history of the place.  What we found in Desmet was a town that seemed weirdly lost in a bygone era - something from our childhood. Kathleen Norris mentioned this, 

“Change is still resented on the Plains, so much so that many small-town people cling to the dangerous notion that while the world outside may change drastically, their town does not...when myth dictates that the town has not really changed, ways of adapting to new social and economic conditions are rejected: not vigorously, but with a strangely resolute inertia...Combatting inertia in a town such as Lemmon can seem like raising the dead. It is painful to watch intelligent businesspeople who are dedicated to the welfare of the town spend most of their energy combatting those more set in their ways. Community spirit can still work wonders here - people raised over $500,000 in the hard times of the late 1980s to keep the Lemmon nursing home open...By the time a town is 75 or 100 years old, it may be filled with those who have come to idealize their isolation. Often these are people who never left at all, or fled back to the safety of the town after a try at college a few hundred miles from home, or returned after college regarding the values of the broader, more pluralistic world they had encountered as something to protect themselves and their families from...More than ever, I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity to cope with change.”   

There is so much in this quote and in this book. As I read Norris’ thoughts on change, I realized that often the church has a similar view of change. We religious folk often resent and reject change and thus flee back to safety and comfort with resolute inertia. Often, we idealize our isolation in our own Meetinghouses. 

Yet, change is part of the creative process we have been talking about. Actually, I have found that creativity is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat. Are we willing to take this opportunity?  

I hope when people drive down Kessler Boulevard and see our beautiful building sitting among the trees, they don’t just see a Meeting, lost in a bygone era or when they walk in our building, they are not greeted by a people who resent change or just embrace comfort.  Rather, I hope they find a place and people that are seeking ways to change and meet the needs of our current condition. 

Let’s be the change, we want to see in our world.