Word #88. Undulating.

“…to be in time means to change…” – From Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

A community is a living organism with the same inconstancy our singular bodies and imaginations experience. We can expect our human groups to go through cycles and seasons like undulating waves. Chaos to order. Stagnation to progress. Joy to sorrow. Richness in spirit to poverty. And back again.

These waves of change can be discombobulating unless we recognize they are natural. Then we can learn to ride them with courage and grace or simply wait out the storm.

This helped me when my children were young and would come home after the first day of school in sadness because “the group this year just isn’t the same as it was last year.” I could sit with them in their sadness rather than get angry at the school. This, too, would pass. Their grieving the change was natural and good, too.