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Today I awoke to find my front yard different.  This view, which greets me every morning with my coffee, prayer, study and silence like an airplane stewardess showing me to my seat for the day’s flight, had a different look today.  I was aware, these last few weeks, that the alfalfa of this farm and, in particular, the field which comprises the green seashore off my front porch, would be cut and then re-grown when the purple flowers begin to proliferate, turning the sea of green into a wash of green and violet.  And as I saw the violet hues increase these past few days I was deeply aware, in the back of my mind, that the cutting would be soon.  I was vaguely aware of the anxiety of change standing outside the front door of my psyche like a messenger.  Bad news in that envelope?

It was last night. The alfalfa was cut last night.

So today I awoke to green stripes and so the purple of the Russian Sage reappeared to take center-stage and a small bow to the applause of the cosmos. Having lost the ability to smell, I was deeply aware of the loss as I imagined the smell of a cut field to be marvelous.  And though I loved the sea of green, something about a striped field was wonderful as well. Playful. Different. Like the stripes of a circus tent, but planetary.

The alfalfa will feed the area horses and some other live stock – there are sheep, lamas and steer in the neighborhood to which Kai-the-dog offers a gentle and rather regal nod as we go by them on our walks through and around neighbor’s fields.  And the food we eat will be good food, in part, because of this good alfalfa.

We humans find change difficult.  At least I do. I like things to stay the same and yet change is the only constant.  Mindfulness practice welcomes change to the table like a Maharaja welcoming a guest to dine with his harem and his court.  The court of the mind is full of power-mongers vying for position, attention, possession.  The harem waits the way our insecurities wait – aware that if they are used, it will be an inauthentic experience for everyone.

But if we can train our minds to see and welcome change the way an artist might – feeling deeply the pain of it but wondering if its arrival might usher forth some new thing, new color, new inspiration, new perspective – well then change can be seen less as an invader or threat and more as a muse, winking mischievously and asking questions about what wonderful things might be possible – possible ONLY because of the change.

A sudden snow fall in Denver today has blanketed the land with white, heavy snow.  It is, for an easterner, confusing to have so much snow in mid-May on my tulips.  I open my closet and find myself wondering if I was premature to replace sweaters with linen. Then I am reminded that it’s a first-world problem.

But beneath the questions of snow and climate is the question of change. Because western thinking is linear, change seems harder to manage than it does in the East in which time has a more circular pattern of loop-de-loops.  One of the ways of being in this world in which our Buddhist brethren so excel is the acknowledgement and the lived-out-acceptance that the one rule which seems immobile is that everything will change.

We, in the western church tend to build massive monuments and establish systems and rules in the hopes that we can stop change.  We want things to change – but only until they fit our world view.  We want things to change to be more in line with what we bring to the table.  We want change when that change makes the world, or at least our small piece of it, look the way we believe it should look.  But then we want to lock that in as immobile, set, determined and unchangeable.  And then we wonder why we feel stress.

Change happens, and what scriptures say is that the great key to managing the stresses and strains of change is to let go of the outcomes.  Jesus modeled that in the passion.  And there in is the key.  Jesus did not give up.  Jesus let God do what God seemed to be doing and was willing to imagine the possibility that despite what he could see and even imagine as an imminent outcome, Jesus seemed to be able to download the level of faith and trust and hope which gave Jesus the power to let go.  In Gethsemene and even on the cross itself, Jesus had some hard questions for God.  But in the end, Jesus’ spiritual life was so deep, and his awareness of God’s love so strong, and his confidence that all shall be well so resolute, that He was able to walk the way of the passion into resurrection.

The look of confusion on Kai’s face was priceless this morning in the late spring snow. And it is a look I have occasionally seen in the mirror and in pastoral visits. But as confusing as life can be, and as sure of change as life seems to make me, I am working hard to be a Christian and not a Deist.  I am working at developing a spiritual practice such that when strange, unexpected things occur because life has brought its inevitable changes, I believe that God is involved in this life, constantly co-creating it with us and the planet and that God’s very close love will be the one constant.