Broken Crowns

I’ve never liked change.

I’m a homebody at heart, someone prone to be content where I am.  Although I adapt easily to new circumstances once I’m in them, the process of transition—even good transition—can be really difficult for me.  I’d rather everything to stay nicely and neatly as it is.  I’m happy here; why leave?

Yet people always tell me that change is inevitable.

I suppose that’s true, and I experience it more profoundly now in my early forties than I did in my early twenties.  Back then, change meant relationships and colleges and question marks about my Grown-Up Adult Future; now it means illness and death, heavy career news, shifts with ramifications for the rest of my mortal life, however long God wills that to be.

The older I get, the more I realize, too, that control is by and large a myth.  I am subject to authorities over me and to their whims and commands; I am subject to the mystery of my body and its cells and my genetics; I am subject to whatever it is the Lord has for me in this day, this month, this life. 

I watch my colleagues and my friends grapple with this as well.  I am convinced that much of our current psycho-spirituality ethos—the one that blends tarot and wellness and crystals and manifesting and “positive energy”—emerges from our desperate desire to control something, anything, about our lives.  If only it was as easy as wearing the right crystal, or thinking very hard about what I wanted my life to become.  If only it was as easy as flipping cards to determine how it’s all going to go.

We fashion crowns for ourselves; we wear them; we pretend authority we don’t own.

Currents of chaos, lately.  Events at my job and for my career did not play out as well as I hoped or as badly as I hoped. They are, rather, inexplicable, and my current frame of mind is to watch and wait and see what happens.  I’ve stopped watching the news again because I simply can’t handle the whiplash.  And even outside an eternal summer seems to linger, resisting fall and any definition of normalcy, pushing sunlight and heat past natural expectation.

Everything just seems so weird.  And I’m not the only one feeling it.

The people around me are struggling with strange family situations and permutations: kids and grandchildren boomeranging back, divorces, unsettled retirement, widowhood.  The countries of the world remain in a sort of permanent, near-war flux. The economy heaves and gasps and totters.  Friends suffer layoffs, change jobs, quit jobs, move.

Diabolical, a friend of mine muttered recently, casting her eye around the diner where we sat sharing breakfast.  She meant it literally: diabolical from diabolos, the Devil.  She knew no other word to describe what feels like a dark, perpetual despair—the sort that tempts fear and indifference, that leads the vulnerable back to fashioning crowns again. 

If only I can take control.  If only I can fix it.

And yet, inexplicably, I remain in good spirits.  In such strange and fractious times, there are marvels too that can only stem from such times.  The seas of trial in my personal life eroded much but have revealed a surprisingly deep and enduring friendship that has blessed me beyond measure.  A man I knew only as an enemy has transformed through an act of divine surprise into an ally with whom I share tears and solidarity.  Summer refuses to leave, but the light still changes in the evenings and that comforts me.

A good latte remains a good latte.

I build my nest out of these things.  Circumstances, I don’t trust, and people inevitably fail.  But God remains, God is unchanging, and so I am content that I can handle the rest of the change alongside the Holy One.  What I need is a promise of sameness and safety: I have that.  What I need is a promise that it will really be all right in the end: I have that, although I must let go of what I can control. 

Day by day, God reminds me, or the journey will be too much for you.

These broken crowns.  I don’t buy crystals or believe in tarot but I grasp too tightly; I work too hard; I reach for things thinking if I can just…  Illusions and delusions that I am the one in control.  I can return to that calm shelter only when I abandon them.  Over and over again.  This too is a part of the practice of faith: to put down what we feel is ours, to let go of what we think we can control, to see ourselves as we really are even as we see God for who He really is.

After the upheaval at work recently, my friend called me.  “I’m not feeling very hopeful,” he muttered.  “Are you?”

“No,” I laughed.  “But give me some time.  I will again soon.”

“Really?  Even with all…this?”

“Really.  Hope is a practice as much as anything else.  An act of persistence.”

He paused.    And then said, quietly, “I want to believe.  Sometimes, I really do.”

He doesn’t.  Not right now, anyway.  But all things are possible.  Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief.  The kingdom is here in spite of our circumstances and in spite of what we see.  It exists above and over and beyond.  To live as though that is true provides stability in trying times.  Speaks more to our faith than any platform or evangelism tool. 

Broken crowns, cracked jars, falling walls: the relentless evidence of change.

The Light shines through them all.