Yearning To Be Made New (Sunday, September 18, 2011)

We yearn to be made new,

to rise from bed each morning
a New Man or New Woman, all that we are called to be,
meeting each new challenge and each joy
with full engagement of heart and mind and soul.

But, of course, we carry around with us each day
all that we have ever been before;
we bring along with us all the hidden crystals
of that whom we have already been:
the countless risings and fallings,
the errors, short-sightedness, stuckness, unkindness
that we have faced too many days
and have often added to.

It takes a leap of faith
for societies or for any of us to change.
It takes actually changing, too:
finding the courage and the faith
to do things differently than we always have before,
to act as though (for it will never be true if we don't)
that this is the first day in a brand new age.

Our hearts may grow weary at the thought;
our minds grow full of fear.
But to return to the cold and static way it was before
might well be nothing more than spiritual dying.

jbs
11/1/98          9/18/11