Change

   Bishop Nealy and I have been emailing back and forth. I'm not sure why I said it, but in one of my notes I wrote that I was unlikely to change much now.
  He replied that it was funny that I had brought up the subject of change. He recently had a conversation with someone who told him that most people are the way they are going to be at age 18 and don't change much after that.
  This bothered him and I can understand why. A big part of our faith is being able to change. I would venture to say that a big part of Christianity in general is the ability to change. The ability to change the way we act, talk and treat ourselves and others. The ability to turn away from destructive behavior and turn to better ways.
   I'm baffled as to why anyone would think that a person is fully formed at age 18 and doesn't change. It doesn't make sense. Eighteen years is only about  a fourth of the usual life span. To say that some one is going to be mostly the same for 3/4 of their life isn't logical at all.
   Humans can and do change all the time. Ask someone who has had a loved one fight in a war or survive some other traumatic experience. I'm certain they will tell you that their loved one is not same person.  Ask someone going through a divorce. Lots of things can change a person. Education, for example. I noticed it when I went to my tenth year class reunion. There were some female class mates of mine who had stayed in town after graduation and did not go on to any higher education. I'd been out of college for 5 years. They were passing around pictures from the senior prom and talking about the all the fun they had had. I couldn't relate to them. I'd graduated from college, worked for a few years before I bought my first house and had travelled to Europe a year before. I couldn't relate to them on any level. I had definitely changed.
  C talks about a time that he went back to South Carolina. He'd been living in Minnesota for about a year and came back to attend the college graduation of a friend of his. He was wearing clothes that were fashionable, but a bit flashy and had grown a neatly trimmed beard. After the ceremony he talked with an elderly gentleman that he knew. C suggested that the school should put central air conditioning into the auditorium. The elderly man looked at C over his bifocals and suggested that if C thought he was going to come and change things, he should just head back up north.
   Later that evening he went with some others to a fancy nightclub in town. He went to sit at the bar for a bit. He was chatting with the bartender when a large mountain man leaned forward out of a dark corner of the bar and asked him if he smoked marijuana. Clearly he had changed a little since he had left. (By the way, the answer to the mountain man's question was no.)
   Everyone changes at least a little as they grow older. You find new hobbies, new interests, new passions. You may find a new job and like it so much that it changes things for you.
   Having a family changes people. C and I spent yesterday afternoon with another couple that we know. We knew them when the four of us were newly married. Now they have three children ages seven to about two and a half. While they were not completely different, they were not quite the same.
   Humans can change. If that weren't the case then there would be no hope. All of the motivational speakers would go broke. The ability to change is what makes us human. We can change who we are. We can make our lives better or worse by our actions.
   We aren't stuck. If there is something you don't like, work and try to change it. We are only limited by what our bodies can handle and what out minds can imagine.
   Isn't that wonderful?