Unity of Birmingham Guest Writer Series:
By Jane Phillips
“Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north, round and round it goes ever returning on its course. All streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.” Ecclesiastes 1:4-7
“Patience is everything.” Rainer Maria Rilke
I don’t know about you, but patience does not come naturally to me. The idea that I cannot control the circumstances of my life, or the misfortunes of the people I love, is abhorrent to me. It feels intentional—as though I’m being punished for something though I don’t know what. The book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament is all about patience, or as my grandmother would say, “not getting your underclothes in a wad!” It’s not personal. Everybody gets their share of “circumstances.” It’s just life on the blue planet.
From the vantage point of seven decades of life, I have observed many things come and go and come again. Some of it good, some of it not so good. I was born just after World War II, and grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. The 50’s were not as ideal as they are portrayed, and the 60’s were, by today’s standards, pretty tame. But within those two decades, were the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, campus unrest, student protest, the slaying of three of our most charismatic leaders, and the birth of rock and roll. While I was living in California in my early 20’s, the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco saw many suicides of folks taking LSD and jumping out of buildings. The drug scene went public for the first time with the arrest and jailing of Timothy Leery and Ram Dass. They were fired from Harvard for working with psilocybin. Today, psilocybin is being used to alleviate PTSD and other major depressive illnesses.
We thought the Civil Rights laws of the 1950’s and 60’s would change things for people of color, just like our predecessors thought Reconstruction laws would. Today, while we see definite progress, we know that the battle for equality is still being fought. All of this is to say that life moves in cycles with each cycle building on the gains and losses of the previous one. An image for this is an ascending spiral—as you move up, you come back to the same point but with a more informed understanding. That’s how evolution works. We cycle through the same circumstances and if we have gained understanding, we experience them differently.
Evolution is a slow process, especially when there is resistance to change. In America and across the world, we are witnessing the pull of the opposites—which is always the response to major change. Some want to go back to an earlier idealized era, and others want to forge ahead. These two worldviews pull against each other. It creates chaos and uncertainty, but whenever it happens, we also know that change is coming. Evolution only moves forward, though it sometimes feels like two steps forward and three back. Steady progress. Patience is required.
It’s easy to assume that our time is the craziest and most chaotic. But as Ecclesiastes tells us, there is nothing new under the sun. There is, however, a time for everything. Our best hope is to see the progress that’s being made in the midst of the chaos—the spiral, like a whirlwind, ascends.
Our job is to keep living, keep breathing, keep doing the right thing, keep asking questions, and always trust the process.
Change will come.
I guarantee it.
In the Spirit,
Jane
Jane Philips is a retired Special Education teacher, Licensed Professional Counselor, and Licensed Massage Therapist. She has also lead Spirituality Groups, Wisdom Circles, drumming circles, and she wrote a daily blog for twelve years called Spiritually Speaking.
Jane is currently working on a memoir titled, Old Crazy Town. She is a fifth-generation quilter.
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