My Evolution

Deconstruction makes people uneasy. Some have opted for gentler terms like restoration (as in art restoration). Tearing things down sounds negative to some and they wonder if we will have anything left after the deconstruction. Once we begin to deconstruct our faith, we realize there was so much more unnecessary things in the way of our authentic self that we worry much less than our groups of origin.

But lately the term that troubles me more than deconstruction is reconstruction. I really do not want to reconstruct my faith around any model that I see in the past. Not that they all did not have some validity, but I don’t necessarily want to recreate the past – I want to evolve!

And there I said – the dirty word – the word that my people considered antithetical to God and creation.

Our romantic obsession with re-creating the past seems to continually capture our imagination. George Burns sang, “I wish I was 18 again,” but if we think about it hard enough, we will realize we really don’t want to be 18 again and we really don’t want to recreate any time in history. The good old days weren’t really as good as what we remember, and it will suit us better to move forward and adapt instead of trying to wrangle the present into a version of a past era.

Evolving is responding to the environment

During the Covid-19 crisis, I see some people holding their breath hoping everything will simply go back to the way it was. But a much better approach is to recognize the situation we are in and respond to it accordingly. It is the way all creatures on this planet have survived since inception.

It is more than just novel to be concerned about the environment we live in and respond to what we observe. Often that require change – we do not like change – so we try to ignore it. But unless we adapt, we will fail to thrive and eventually fail to survive. Trying to hand our responsibility off to God is irresponsible and is just bypassing most of the time. We don’t really need a miracle; we simply must respond.

Everything is growing and expanding

Even though everything about Science fascinates me, I do not claim to understand much of it. I am the same way with the relatively new areas of psychology and physics, etc. What I do understand is that the universe is expanding and growing. It doesn’t seem to go backward or shrink inward. That is just a general impression on my part.

Although animals and plants do things that protect themselves, they do not seem to be focused on regression, they always move toward progression. Growth, expansion, evolving! That is the theme.

So much of my previous spiritual life was about fear, control and maintaining. Even if we talked about growth, the major themes were avoiding obstacles and how to keep things from going off the rails. As with everything there is some benefit to planning and modeling, but it is easy to reconstruct something that is small and stagnant and just repeats the patterns of the past.

As my faith and practices evolve, they tend to involve more nuance, mystery, and paradox. They are characterized by growth, expansion and thriving. It is more mystical than certain, and I cannot really say it’s well mapped out. I do not even swear that I know I’m going to succeed, because success is not really the goal. It is more about what I now claim as my tagline:

Be where you are Be who you are * Be at peace*

This focus causes me to evolve instead of re-creating. Reconstruction, reengineering, and the likes are fine because most times we tend to get way off track and stay committed to ineffective methods and practices for too long. But let us take the high road when we put it back together and not just build a better mousetrap — let’s reimagine the whole thing! Let’s evolve!