William Bridges' book, Transitions, has been in my hands now for about a month. Reading about "endings" and "the neutral zone" and "new beginnings." I read the book years ago in grad school, but had no categories for it. Now I do.
The last month has been a season of "endings." Lots of goodbyes, grieving some loss, and the occasional moment of celebration over a small handful of things I will no longer have to put up with. (Ended that sentence with two prepositions... fancy, huh?) The "endings" have had to do with the church, relationships in the community, and in some ways my identity.
That's where the "participle" part comes in.
Bridges talks about the in-between time, the transition time, as being a time for participles instead of nouns. When he left teaching he came to grips with a neutral zone when he could no longer say, "I'm a teacher." So for a season he adopted participles as descriptors: "I'm running"... "I'm eating"... "I'm typing." And that was enough.
I think as church-types we get caught up in nouns too much, and participles too little. I'm a __________. You're a __________. Well that church down the street is a ___________. Fill in the blank: Liberal. Conservative. Progressive. Maybe we could do more with participles. That church is feeding the poor. We are healing broken lives. I am writing about this month's vision quest. Could we dare to let that be enough for a time?
So for this month, the month of March, I'm in a neutral zone. No Glenwood. No Bering. No preacher. Just typing, eating, playing with my kids, loving my wife, selling this house (please?), praying for those I love, and on and on the participles roll.
Oh yeah... the "Vision Quest." Every day this month I am reading a handful of Psalms, sitting in quiet prayer, maybe reading a little Chinese philosophy, but all-in-all doing what Bridges calls "attentive inactivity." My goal is to accomplish as little as possible for the month of March; but in so doing, to be open to whatever path God sets before us, hopefully having eyes to see and ears to hear.
