Shift Happens

Living Between The No-Longer and the Not-Yet

What was true yesterday may not be true today.

What is true today may not be true tomorrow.

In using the words “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” I am not necessarily meaning a twenty-four hour period of time. Decades, even centuries, can be involved.

Things that were thought to be one way turn out to be another. Matters that had been in the dark come to light.

There was a time when all humans believed, simply accepted as factually true, that the earth was the center all of that was. Everything else existed for and revolved around the earth. Then, Copernicus.

There was a time when it was believed humans had two states of being - conscious and asleep. What you saw was what you got. Then, Freud and Jung.

There was a time when the myth of human creation was more or less taken as fact. If you lived in Western culture the belief was that somewhere, sometime something like Adam and Eve must have been. Then, Darwin.

There was a time when human illness, its causes and cures, were virtually mysterious. Then, Pasteur and Lister. Louis Pasteur renown for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination and pasteurization. Joseph Lister is the one who introduced antiseptic protocol into surgical procedures.

More often than not the new truths that were introduced, by these and others, were resisted and denied. Sometimes with violence.

Shift happens.

Years ago I went to a conference where one of the speakers was Ilia Delio. She looked out over the crowd and said something like this:

“As I look at you, most of you appear to be over the age of fifty. You grew up being taught and believing that our earth is a minor planet in a solar system that is part of a galaxy know as ’The Milky Way’ and that, perhaps there were two or three other galaxies ‘out there.’

“Let me tell you what we now know. There are in the ‘observable universe’ between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies.

“You cannot get your mind around that. Further more, this energy field in which we live is evolving, expanding, creative, and entangled. I don’t know what words you use to describe God, but I would start with those.”

That was over a dozen years ago when I first heard her speak.

Shift happens.

I am aware that it is always true that we live between the last moment and the next, between the last breath we took and the next we hope to take, between this day which we hope to live well and survive and tomorrow which we hope to wake up to. For the most part we greet this inevitability with equanimity.

Most of us are broadminded enough to admit that there are two side to every question - our own side, and the side that no intelligent, informed, sane and self-respecting person could possibly hold. (An attempt at humor.)

I am part of that demographic that remembers when there was nothing digital. Now I write with a pen that transcribes my cursive writing into text on the device of my choosing.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of this country where some will sing of a country that calls itself indivisible, our culture has cracked open along fault lines of culture, class, religion and tribal identity unlike any time in my lifetime. The world seems to be twisted into some new form of insanity on almost a daily basis. Whether we as a globe choose to turn into the light before plunging ourselves, along with our neighbors, into darkness remains to be seen.

One of the things different about our time is the speed with which things happen. The insights of Copernicus and Galileo weren’t widely known about for hundreds of years. When Gutenberg invented the printing press that involved a massive revolution, it took centuries before that was fully unpacked. Our technological revolution has evolved with astonish speed.

Think of this: during the time I have been working on this post, I had a Zoom session with a person in another country. He told me about a book he was reading that he thought I would like. While we were talking, I searched the book out, bought an e-version of it on line, downloaded it to my tablet, and looked up the very passage he was talking about. Just ten years ago that would have been incomprehensible. To my grandchildren it is so ho-hum.

For some this shift is exciting. For others, terrifying. For some increased knowledge and information is liberating. For others it has created deep wells of idiocy and denial. For these people, they yearn for a return to the past. However, how many milkmen, lamplighters or buggy whip makes have you met lately?

One of the things I fight, or try to correct, in my teaching is the horrible notion that there is “one true religion.” Or, for that matter, one “true way” to do most anything.

I joke a fair amount in my teaching about people who don’t use their turn signals when they drive. How/why should I trust that they know how to operate the rest of the vehicle? However, this is not a small point. Since Covid I have noticed an increase in the number of jerks who are driving on our streets and roads.

I am coming more and more to believe and have faith in not the “sleaziods” at the top who are screwing everything up. What counts are the average folks who through normal, simple gestures like being kind in public places, being attentive to the elderly and being considerate while behind the wheel of a vehicle are what Pope Francis called “artisans of the common good.”

Being both in the generation that is the first and the last gives us an interesting vantage point in which and from which to look at what we have lost and what we have gained. We used to look to elders for wisdom and guidance. Now we look to children - not for wisdom and guidance - for help in learning to deal with new technologies.

Social anthropologists are saying that we are retaining less wisdom and knowledge because we don’t need to. We remember less, know everything and yet we know nothing. Someone referred to this condition as feeling “smupid.” Smart and stupid at once.

Many people are plagued with doubt, fear, and anger. Those conditions are not bad in and of themselves but left to fester this can be very problematic - for everyone! Doubtful people do questionable things, fearful people do frightening things, angry people act out in angry ways.

Shift happens.

How shall we deal with it? I once was privileged to meet the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He advised that when fearful emotions or troubling states of mind arise, we should open the door and invite them in. Offer to prepare tea for them and assure them you will take care of them during this period of time and that you will also make sure that they don’t make matters worse because you’ll be busy making them better.

Shift happens.

How we respond to it is entirely up to us.

I am suggesting we be guided by the qualities of humility, justice, and peace.