Sitting outside the bakery in Weaverville in my car, in the dark and cold, in order to get an internet signal since we don’t have it in our new office yet, all day experiencing the delicate operations my current life changes impose at every level – not just physically but emotionally, psychologically and spiritually in terms of self-concept, world-concept, professional ideas, personal relationship changes, financial operations, caring for the balance of so many responsibilities as things shift – in my sense of overwhelm I can’t help but think about our brothers and sisters in so many nations who have been thrust into radical change without seeking it.

Change being the nature of the universe, and stability actually having very little to do with it since we are moving through space at an incomprehensible velocity, I wonder why it is that I, and we, tend to long so for stability and are inept, so often, at change. Why is change so hard? And why does the idea of stability remain the illusory, yearned for but never achieved goal? Friends have asked me what it is that I want, and I have replied on occasion that I simply want my life’s situation to stabilize. It has been in radical flux since 1994, and I get tired.

Will the people in Japan, Egypt, Libya, Chile, Haiti – just to name some obvious ones – have the luxury of stability anywhere on the horizon? Should any of us expect it in the first place?

Be careful what you wish for. I believe I need to do some conscious work on longing for trust in life’s endless velocity of movement. Digging in my heels and wishing for something other creates a lot of anxiety, problems and not much else, surely I know that.

I offer my brothers and sisters who are living with what feels like too much change, way too abruptly and uninvited, prayers in every way, maybe especially for some measure of release into the motion in their life to see what it holds for them and for all of us. They are our way-showers now. They humble me as I struggle to assimilate my small changes. At some level we are all in this together, though they have taken the great burden for now.