October 8, 2006
Lincoln Christensen

Transition:

I have a billion ideas to tell you about change and transition. And, if my bet is right, and, if you are the liberal you think you are, you have probably considered change many many times over your life.

 And, I am not going to bore you with platitudes about how change is necessary, how change is required, how change is desired….

I’d like you to take a moment and think about your situation today.

What’s going on with me?

What’s going on with my friends

What would I like to change,?

Perhaps you would like to change big, I mean really big things, like the Indiana Central Time Zone, perhaps change private insurance and health care to nationalized health care, perhaps the administration in the government has disappointed you and you would like to see, or even work for a change that more adequately represents you.

On a more local level, you would like to have a newer car to drive, so you plan to change it. Or, you like fuchsia rather than puce for your bathroom, puce, now that’s a funny sounding word, isn’t it… or, the newspaper has been coming in day in and day out with worse and worser news, you’d like to change that.

As we move thru the life, we constantly are thinking of things we want to or need to change. I’m too heavy, I’m too thin, my eyes aren’t the right color, I haven’t been as nice to “so-and-so” as I should have been, I should change and do more for this or that cause.

We all have those thoughts. Thinking I am a social and political liberal, I constantly think of how things are changing, mostly for the worse lately, but changing all the same.

I find myself chafing at change.

What is going on?

Who are these people and what in the heck are they trying to prove?

Just what do they want to do to our happy and not so happy lives?

They want to change it… that’s what they want to do….

How Many people we know have lived and died, affecting our lives in wondrous ways. In some sense we know that we, ourselves, are going to pass from this life… sooner or later.

How do you think about what is going to happen to you next?

Perhaps you worry, perhaps you plan, fret, hope, expect things to be a certain way, imagine happiness or disaster….

And how do you think of your mortality? Is death the end? The beginning? A phase? A transition?

 I’d like to suggest that you think of the future and the changes coming in this manner;

You have gotten this far in your life’s journey, you’ve arrived here this morning, as a culmination of all the changes you have had in your life to this point.

You have arrived here in this place of peace, humility, safety and concern after all your days, years, and minutes of changing.

Look to the future with anticipation of the changes to come,

What will come next?

What will it be like?

What will I be thinking?

What will I look like?

What will my children or my parents look like?

All of the things you have yet to experience, grow from, encounter, and watch unfold…

Frankly and honestly, at this point in your life’s journey, each of you has never looked better to me than you do this morning.

These words came from Washington Irving, certainly from an earlier time in his reference to transportation.: