Conversations with a Soul (17 page)

The first story in the book of Genesis, written as poetry and shaped by the hand and heart of a Priest, asserts that God’s first act in the saga of creation was not about making anything but it was to bring
order
out of
chaos
.
⁴⁴

To change this
formless void,
as the author calls it; light and darkness were separated out from each other, as was the earth from the heavens, dry land from the oceans, and light from sun and moon. Order was decreed in plant and animal kingdoms limiting each in their reproductive cycles, to produce only after their own kind. Even the days of the week surrendered to the primacy of the Sabbath, a day of reflection, rest and worship so that the rest of the week might reflect order and creative purpose.

Consequently, order could be seen everywhere, shaped and moulded by vibrant patterns that revealed themselves in the interplay between
change
and
stability
, a fundamental blueprint of all living things, to which we will return shortly.

Order shaped the changing seasons, order called forth the dawn from out of a dark night, order triumphed over the sinister gods of chaos and fate, and order replaced endless cycles of predestination with the magnificent freedom to choose. Order decreed that some things must come to an end and others must be born anew. The promise of order was even tucked away in a rainbow that followed a terrifying, sudden downpour, recalling Yahweh’s pledge that:

As long as earth lasts, sowing and reaping,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night

shall cease no more.
⁴⁵

Monarch butterflies, California sage and horsehair ferns don’t make thoughtful, conscious decisions to fly south, hibernate or blossom. The secret pulse of life, hidden deep in all living things, is quickened by the seasons. Winter must come to an end and surrender to the promise of Spring; Summer must gently quieten and yield to the promised rest of Fall. Rain, snow, cold and heat all have their place in nurturing the earth and each is the result of a change and the initiator of change. Thus the world about us is invited to rest or to come forth, to delight, to startle, to engage, to summon wonder and to initiate a conversation with the Soul.

Every day, our world, no less than that of the ancient Jews, is shaped by mysterious, sometimes mystical, patterns woven through the interplay of change and stability. The story of life
is the story of patterns
, constantly transforming today into tomorrow and another becoming. Our best scientists assure us that everything is in movement from the immense unfolding of the universe to the infinitesimal journeys made by vibrating, whirling protons, electrons and neutrons, yet at the same time, matter is stable.

Sometimes patterns seem obvious, sometimes hidden, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, sometimes completed in a flash, sometimes extended over years or even hundreds of years, but always of fundamental importance to the world about us
and
the world within us.

Even machines are governed by the principles of change and stability. My refrigerator constantly cycles on and off in order to keep the internal temperature stable; similarly, when I accelerate my car. I initiate  changes through the gears to keep the engine’s revolutions within a safe and stable range even though the vehicle is traveling faster and faster.

Patterns of change and stability have long thrust upon those who live close to the land, critical choices about when to sow and to harvest, to water and to till, to hunt and to fish, to store and to trade.

In ancient times animals and even human beings were sacrificed to the fickle gods of weather so as to ensure favourable, stable conditions for farmers. For various reasons, not least a shortage of willing volunteers, we’ve given up on the sacrifice bit. It probably never worked anyway!

Today, we understand that our choices are made against seasonal changes that have long woven reliable, familiar patterns, gifting us with a predictable, orderly, secure world that makes planning possible. We’ve learned to trust and cooperate with powers that are beyond our control. With some minor adjustments, we know when winter will spread its chill and when spring will call dormant things alive again. We know that summer is a season free of frost and that fall will announce the imminent return of winter.

For most of us, those choices have been minimized by the frozen foods section in the local supermarket. Our engagement with the ebb and flow of the seasons has become relegated to planning vacations, breaking out sweaters and overcoats, or shorts and sun screen.

Yet patterns of change and stability are as much a characteristic of our human, personal and interpersonal worlds as they are of the world about us, although on occasion, much more difficult to see.

There’s a rhythm at work in the tension between change and stability, but it’s not always obvious. We’ve all struggled with choices and tried to envision what each option would bring until the famous clarity of hindsight makes fools and sages out of us and lays bare the seen and unseen consequences of our choices, usually in vividly simple terms!

Sometimes
the introduction of a change
demolishes a rich, stability upon which life depends. We see this happening in the build-up of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere which results in melting glaciers, which have been stable for thousands of years. The same principle applies when two people, who can no longer live together, change their relationship through divorce, and thereby impact the stability that small children need for growth and security.

At other times, stability is destroyed when we
don’t change
: So, an unwillingness to cut back on logging for exotic wood is resulting in the widespread destruction of rainforests. In a similar vein, the intimacy enjoyed by parents and children frequently atrophies when either or both cannot accommodate to changes that accompany growth and maturation.

And then to make the whole thing even more complicated, the decision not to make a decision can sometimes become the biggest decision of all and initiate changes that give birth to a form of stability which runs counter to everything we have ever wanted or intended.

We sometimes see this happening when a family is in denial about one of their members’ drinking habits. Through everyone’s refusal to address the problem of how alcoholic addictive behaviour impacts them and their choices, the stage is set for a drama which plays itself out in tragic forms of stability that inevitably results in the death of security, love and trust. Subtle and sometimes not so subtle messages  'not to rock the boat' frequently serves as the rational for avoiding confrontation and coerces the co-conspirators into preserving the game - even when 'the boat' is already taking on water and will most certainly sink with heart breaking consequences!

Yet even in far less dramatic circumstances, none of us can ever escape the tension created by the interplay of change and stability, any more than we can opt out of the influence of gravity.

Every day we make hundreds of choices set within a matrix created by the interdependence of change and stability: The clothing we wear, the food we eat, the bills we pay, the conversations we initiate or to which we respond, the commitment to physically exercise or not, the overtures we make to members of the opposite sex, the decision whether to pass on a choice bit of gossip - are all subject to this interplay. Almost every choice with which we are presented, even in the normal run of the mill day, results in changing some behaviours and choosing not to change others, and has greater or lesser consequences.

Obviously many of these choices are made in a flash for we seldom have the energy or luxury to carefully weigh every simple decision. Yet at the same time some sixth sense usually warns us when we need to exercise wise, mature judgment. We may choose to ignore that warning, and granted that not every choice has consequences that are predictable and obvious, but a marked inability to predict the outcome of our everyday choices inevitably has consequences.

Few questions have greater importance, then, than questions about the kind of stability we want and the kinds of changes we need to make, or not make, in order to achieve and maintain that state.

Like a common thread that weaves its way through the stories of every age, it’s impossible to escape noticing the ways in which change and stability have moulded and determined the fate of nations and empires.

Thomas Cahill has pointed out that the fall of Rome came at the end of a lengthy process of decay. The empire simply atrophied, resulting in its own style of chaos, because it could not or would not make critical changes to preserve a stable, civic life.

In the old days of republican Rome, the consuls - there were two of them, so each could keep the other honest, elected for a term of one year to thus prevent dictatorship – had been the executive pinnacle of Roman government. . . Nobly seizing the imperial power, Octavian became Augustus Caesar, the first emperor - and the consulships were henceforth transformed into honorary positions, vestigial reminders of republican virtue, and utterly ornamental.

The consulships were not the only ornamental offices in Roman society: the Eternal City was filled with the comings and goings of important men – senators, magistrates, bustling administrators of all kinds – performing meaningless duties. Augustus, while seizing all power, had wisely left in place all the republican trappings. The empty show that resulted only emphasized the more the importance of how things were done - since no one wished to advert to the vanity of what was being done. . . the life of the capital turned ever more insubstantial and brittle, so that some ceremony or other, meticulously executed, could become the apogee of a man’s life.
⁴⁶

The cyclical rise and fall of all great civilizations bears a striking similarity. Long before the axe is laid to the root of the tree it has died from within, killed by an inability to grasp a vision and then make the changes that would result in a vibrant stability to be shared by all its citizenry.

Long before the City States were impacted by conflict, intrigue, and protracted warfare they were destroyed from within. To no avail Greek poets warned against what they called
hubris
.

…
its root meaning is the violent overstepping of the mark, the insolence of triumph, and the pride of life that tramples underfoot the unwritten law of gods and men. Its most characteristic application was to the insatiable thirst for power which drives a man or a nation headlong, as though possessed by a demon, on the path of unbridled self-assertion.
⁴⁷

Apparently,
Forbes Magazine
, in an attempt to identify the wealthiest Americans, has abandoned millionaires and multimillionaires as qualifying categories. Nowadays you have to be a
billionaire
to be considered.

One winner joined the list after weighing in with more than $1 billion earned by short-selling subprime credit. At the same time thousands of young families lost their homes in foreclosures.