Changeless Change

The city of Austin, Texas boasts almost two hundred and thirty days of sunshine per year. After moving there from a foggy mountain in Tennessee I remained grateful for all the natural vitamin D that came my way until the day I moved here to Decatur. Oddly though, the two week period of “winter” in Austin brought out a strange quality in her residents. When the clouds rolled in or the temperatures dipped down into the forties Austinites’ moods soured. One day as a barber explained the locals’ inability to handle the cold she said something that I have now heard elsewhere—even in Alabama. “If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it will change.” The statement bemused me enough that it has remained in my memory.

We can joke about the weather. At almost all parish functions someone makes a comment about the current state of the out of doors. “It’s awful humid” seems to be the current refrain. Of course, when a cold front turns a summer’s day into a mild one someone will point out just how pleasant it is. In the fall we will remark on how blue the sky is. During winter we will complain about the cold. Then in the spring when we get all four seasons in a few days we can say again, “If you don’t like the weather wait five minutes and it will change.” Weather quite often we want to change, but so much else in life we fight tooth and nail to keep it just like it is. Fiddler on the Roof will soon grace the stage here in Decatur and I cannot help but hear those opening lyrics from “Tradition”.

So what about those things that we hold so dear? Do they change or do they stay the same? What about the Church? What about our Faith? What about our Traditions? What about God?

There is a prayer that I find myself praying quite often when I say Compline.

“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” (Book of Common Prayer, 133). While I steadily believe that God’s nature of creation, agape love, forgiveness, peace, charity, self-sacrifice, redemption, reconciliation, etc. never changes; I do believe though, that our understanding of God continues to shift and yes (gasp!) even change!

We did not always believe in the abundant divine community known as Father, Son, and Spirit or Trinity. The Church took a long time to figure it out. We most likely would not have ever gotten to this grand realization and this huge shift in the way we relate to God without the saint whom we celebrate today.

Basil the Great was once just a boy who studied classical philosophy in the 4^th Century. Had it not been for the faith of his sister Macrina and the death of his beloved little brother he may never have been baptized. Though once he was at age 28 his life certainly changed.

For a time he helped to reorganize the anchorite order. They had been for a time a very individualistic group of monastics, but he brought them together to create communities of prayer and work. Later, he was ordained a priest at about the height of the conflict between warring sides of Christianity. Basil became Bishop of Caesarea by a narrow margin and set out to expand with other Orthodox Christians the view that Father, Son, and Spirit are One in glory, majesty, and unity. And, the language that the Church used in that day needed expansion, such that all three persons of the Trinity were properly adored. Without his tireless fighting we may not have ever understood the powerful mystery that is our three-in-one God. Sadly though Basil died before this change could be affirmed by the Second Ecumenical Council.

What Basil teaches us in our lives might seem a little strange. This great one sought a new way of seeing God. In each new age we must see afresh the face of God. We are often tempted to just settle on how things have always been, but just like the weather always changes God is eternally creating anew all things. Yes, as strange as it sounds this very moment God abundantly creates the vast expanse of interstellar space, even you and me.

As God continues to create we are called to create with God. Our life is to be part of the spreading of God’s way. We are to be like Basil and all those other great ones who have helped to point the Church to both God’s eternal changelessness and the every changing nature of God’s Creation at the same time! Like the mystery of the Trinity we will not understand this always. Still God beckons us to live in the relationship of the Trinity as we aim to make the world God’s place and rest in God’s abiding love.

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