“I know what will make this work, and all that has to happen is for you to change!”

Haven’t we all been tempted to take that position at one time or another?! Sometimes the person we’re dealing with is pretty darned unreasonable; seems well within bounds to point that out.

Well, it’s only going to yield helpful results when the person you’re saying it to is highly motivated to trust you and work with you. It will only work when the person has some question about what they are doing or thinking -- and in the U.S.A. today, there seems to be almost no one who will admit to being less than certain! Wouldn’t want to seem “wishy-washy!”

Thought which recalibrates in the midst of changing circumstances and understandings seems today an underappreciated asset. To lose the capacity for listening to views different from one’s own, is to forfeit a significant part of what makes one a responsible citizen of a diverse nation. Unless it is simply up to persons different from you to change.

It may sound silly, but I suggest to you the position embedded in the quote at the top finds wide acceptance and use.

I see it embedded in the Franklin Graham ‘controversy’ over today’s National Day of Prayer. The Graham family has made many positive contributions to individuals, our country and our world; I wouldn’t count Franklin Graham’s comments about Muslims among the positive contributions. What’s more, I think the words he has shared fall short of the high calling of the Christian faith Franklin means to represent. They strike me as prideful rather than humble, and they certainly don’t make a constructive bridge to a way forward -- unless of course, all that needs to happen is for the other to change.

Christian faith is expressly NOT about conformity by the other. It’s about loving others as our selves (presumably we’ve found the personal health to love self). In the golden rule we don’t say ‘do to others as they do to you’, but rather “do unto others as you would have them to do to you.”

Our idealism calls us to be people of integrity and persistence of goodwill, regardless of what we get in return. We win others not by the use of a hammer as much as by the persuasive power of our own idealism and love on display, dare I say our reflection of God on display. This can seem so impractical we are tempted to take shortcuts and use coercion or worse. People notice our shortcuts -- it’s that way, when you tell people you mean to demonstrate one thing and then demonstrate another.

What is central to faith is a personal invitation to be changed, an invitation issued by self to God, inviting God to transform the person making the petition. The practice of faith, over time, is repeated choice, acceptance of God, to introduce constructive cycles and to supplant destructive patterns.

When people see the cycles of change bringing positive change in us, and when they experience our genuine love and humility, tempered by personal memory of small-mindedness and judgment we’ve been called to discard, this is noticed too. And in this humble living testimony great possibility is born.

The greatest possibilities available to us are made possible in our willingness to adapt, even to change.


Prayer of St. Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon:
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope
where there is darkness, light
where there is sadness, joy
O divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen