Love grants us 

serenity to accept the things we cannot change,

courage to change the things we can, and

wisdom to know the difference.

            — A version of the Serenity Prayer

If someone had told us three years ago that there would be a global pandemic, we might have been able to make some predictions as to how it would play out. We might even have been correct in some areas. I myself might have predicted that once the severity and transmissibility of the illness calmed down, there would be an awkward phase of readjusting of our personal, social, and professional lives. But I don’t think I could have anticipated how disappointed I’d feel. As it turns out, change is not theoretical. It’s experiential. 

In her book Trusting Change: Finding Our Way Through Personal and Global Transformation, Rev. Karen Hering underscores the importance of change as a shared and participatory experience. If we’re going to get through this with any sort of grace and satisfaction, it’ll be because we love each other through it, building relationships and sharing new habits. We become a community of “thresholders,” journeying together across the threshold from what was to what will be.

Though we tend to wish otherwise, the experience of change includes grief. I must admit that I’ve been avoiding grieving. Things still seem so in-flux that I’m not sure what has really passed away. Why would I grieve yet? And life is hard enough. Why would I make it harder by going into painful emotions? But I’m coming to realize that my reticence to grieve is keeping me stuck in a transitional phase. When I postpone my grief, I’m refusing to accept the things I cannot change, which drains my energy and steals my clarity to change the things I can.

There is so much that deserves grieving these days. Listening to the news with an open heart while making breakfast is to risk dissolving into a puddle on the kitchen floor. The alternative is to develop a hard shell and be numb to the devastation. Sometimes, I avoid both extremes by simply ignoring the news. But I regretted this approach when I got home last Sunday evening and caught up on the news. Reflecting on the Sunday Service, I wished I had acknowledged the attempted assassination of our House Speaker and the stampede at the Seoul Halloween party. I would have adjusted my message and held space for us to grieve together. Rev. Hering writes, “The more we learn to welcome grief instead of shutting it out, the more adept we’ll be as thresholders, personally and globally.” It’s difficult–sometimes impossible–to do this alone in our kitchens. But it’s one of the most valuable functions of the spiritual space we create when we get together.

So I am deepening my commitment to feel the full range of my emotions this month in service of our personal and collective transformation. This is an awkward and uncomfortable moment in our history–and there’s no way out other than through it.

I’m grateful to be with you on the journey. Come, let us grow together.