Change is Good! You Go First!

I cannot make pie crust. My mother has told me and shown me how countless times and I still can’t do it. The simple ingredients simply do not coalesce as required to actually assume a coherent, pie-like shape under the rolling pin. None-the-less, I did learn how to make bread. It wasn’t easy and, in the end the recipes failed me, but I learned how. The problem for me was always how much flour to use, which depended on the flour and humidity and other things over which I had no control. Measuring the amount of flour that I was supposed to use was a necessary place to begin. In the end, however, it became for me both a matter of feel as I kneaded the dough and what the surface of the dough looked like after some serious kneading.

I use the image of making bread, because it is, for me, an image of transformation. It involves second order change, which is qualitatively different than first order change.

Much of what we do in life involves either no change; we really do like our routines and habits, or first order change, which involves a logical extension between past and current practices. It is doing more or less of what we are already doing. First order change is reversible, which means it’s relatively easy to change our mind and abandon the project. New learning is not required and the story of what we are doing remains essentially unchanged.

Second order change is deciding or being forced to do something in a radically different way than you have done it before. It typically involves a new way of seeing things. It might begin informally, but it does require new learning and the creation of a new story to explain and to make sense of things. And it involves transformation, which is to say profound, qualitative changes in who you are and what you do, changes that make a discernible difference. Real second order change is irreversible because the avenues to returning to the old way are no longer viable options. This is to say that we won’t go back even if we could because the old story no longer works for us.

To speak of bread as a symbol of transformation is to speak literally and metaphorically. Master Baker Peter Reinhart talked about the series transformations that occur that result in bread. Wheat is grown, harvested and converted into flour. Flour is combined with water, salt and yeast and becomes alive as the bread rises. The bread is baked and becomes for us the staff of life, a necessary food staple to sustain human life, to sustain our life as we partake of the bread.

Unitarian minister A. Powell Davies said that “the purpose of life is to grow a soul.” To say this is to suggest that at birth there are many ways in which we can express our humanity as we grow and some of these involve the essence of who we are.

It seems to me that we come to religious community with a deep yearning for more: more meaning, more purpose, and more connection. We come with a holy discontent and the desire for transformation. Using the journey metaphor, we come in search of a path and fellow-pilgrims to accompany us on the journey. Unitarian Universalist minister Michael Schuler writes that people come to our churches because, “They have become frustrated with a life that feels shallower, more tedious, and less intrinsically meaningful than it should.” They want “a fresh perspective, a renewed sense of purpose, and the possibility of greater daily gladness.”

The container for this work is at hand. It is this religious community. The invitation is simple: take up the soul work that calls to you. Proceed with diligence, commitment, and compassion and you will be amazed at the growth that will eventually occur. As Richard Holloway said, the trick is “to change elegantly rather than awkwardly when the time is ripe.”