Looking back on over two decades of desires….
Pastoral Perspective — On Transformation and Peace in the Midst of Rapid Discontinuity (–August 2007)
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the notion(s) of change and the nature of transitions in the journey of life and faith. As I grow older in experiencing the beginnings of the adult years of the so-called mid-life, now along with the need for regulated prescription medicines, I seem to be finding a certain contention and connection between two distinct desires within me.
Two yearnings of my own human spirit are appearing to surface in the distance above the sea’s waves. Vying for my attention like a hydra emerging out of a swirling whirlpool with its tentacles reaching up from the depths of a vast ocean as my vessel of transport traverses the torrent and navigates through the nautical event horizon of a massive gravitational black hole’s abyss where and when there is no escape….
Okay, so maybe it’s not quite as graphic as all that, but it sometimes feels like that at times and moments such as this like today when my wife and I are celebrating our twentieth (20th) wedding anniversary. Where did the time go? Where have we gone on in our lives lived out attempting to be faithful to ourselves, to each other, and to one another intimately in and ultimately to the One Who has held us together through thick and thin?
Last week, our family attended an annual extended family reunion of the Espiritu-Velasco clan as one cousin’s spouse sang accompanied with full chorus and orchestra at the new Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. We blessed another cousin’s congregation at New Hope Church in Alsip as we remembered and honored together our ancestors in faith through the generations in a service of praise and worship with choral and instrumental ensembles. This week and next we are spending a working vacation out of state in the town where my wife Melissa spent her childhood years growing up in an inner-city neighborhood. We are helping her parents move out of the house they have called home for nearly half a century and transition into assisted living in these latter years of their lives.
Two decades of our own married life, and six children later, there has been over all those years as the saying goes, a lot of water gone under the bridge as it were. Much has changed, and yet as recently as yesterday, some things appear not to have changed all that much since we began. The same issues may surface over time and again as lifelong journeys exhibit our continual need for God’s grace and mercy.
At this juncture, two things I find myself grasping for are a need for continuing personal renewal and transformation, enjoined with a heartfelt wish for the nostalgic simplicity of the way things used to be. Do I really want a new iPod or an amazing iPhone to “complete” or “perfect” my life further, or wouldn’t it be nicer to just be on an island paradise where the only blackberry was a naturally occurring fruit indigenous to the native habitat? I want the freshness of new life and a sense of adventure while at the same time coupled with a youthful experience of uncomplicated sameness in the way we once were. Can this be possible? Are we able to achieve this sort of coincident collusion of calm un-complication and circumstantial contingency in our life together of faith in Christ?
As you might guess at this point in my essay, I am appropriating the conversation in dialogue regarding my own life’s journey and beginning to apply it in analogy with the journey of our congregation. I am continually discerning in prayer our journey of faith together as one in which there is a deep desire and dire need for change to be effected in our joint transformation for the sake of the gospel reaching out to others in Christ, and also a yearning for the simply peaceful calm of gracious practice grounded in tradition from the rich heritage we have as a people and family of faith.
Can we do it? Are we able to accomplish great and wonderfully new things for the advancement of God’s kingdom and the cause of Christ while at the same time celebrate together the goodness of the Lord’s enduring loving kindness among us through generations before us? Can we welcome in the new while continuing to treasure the old? I saw, heard, experienced, and witnessed this very thing at a joint morning of worship led by the youth praise band at Summerfest at which the old hymns were sung together with fresh and new vitality among young and old alike. I believe and know we can do all things through Christ Who gives us strength.
For the Spirit of God’s exciting and renewing missional ministry through and among us in the One Who is the same yesterday, today, and forever—with you, I continue
In Christ’s Service,
Pastor Rex
November 26th, 2007 at 1:26 am
nice dude. Blackberries and whip cream…yummy.