A Whole New Person–or Not
I saw a made for TV movie once that told the story of two women who had catastrophic medical events. A stereotypically ordinary suburban wife and mother had a massive aneurysm. Meanwhile, while crossing the road in front of the same hospital where the first woman was pronounced braindead, the second woman, a stereotypically graceful and beautiful model, was hit by a truck–her body irreparably mangled, her spinal column probably severed. Can you guess what’s coming? Surgeons decided, with the permission of the second woman and the husband of the first woman, to attempt a radical, experimental procedure. They transplanted the unharmed brain of the model into the unharmed body of the wife and mother. Drama ensued and I stopped watching rather than absorb the anxiety of the emotional strife resulting from that improbable transformation.
A hospital chaplain told me about one of her patients awaiting a real life, but perhaps still far removed from our personal experience, most of us, transformation in the form of a life-saving heart transplant. That born-again Christian patient was both eager and full of fears. One of those fears was that Jesus Christ would not be in their new heart the way He was in their original heart.
Advertisers, marketers, influencers, and most users and consumers of social would have us believe that real life transformation (short of the transplant of an organ that may or may not contain the seeds of our essential being and existing relationships)--these people and industries would have us believe that real life transformations are quick, simple and hassle-free. Everything from a morning cup of coffee to power drinks and supplement-laden smoothies, from shoe inserts to exercise programs, from a fresh coat of paint on the bedroom walls to a meditation practice are promised to transform outlooks, health, whole lives in a matter of hours or days, or weeks at the most. The gym at the end of my street is even called Transform Savannah.
From before our birth until the moment of our death our human lives are marked by transformation. And many of those transformations are dramatic though not as sensational as the two I described a moment ago. But they don’t happen overnight and they aren’t as simple as downing the right quasi-healthful elixir.
If we were to pass a microphone through the pews right now I bet each of you could tell us of a transformation you or someone close to you is undergoing this very day–from addiction to recovery, from single to partnered, working to retired, actively raising children to empty-nester, from isolation to connection, from robust health to disability or chronic disease, from doubting to knowing, from knowing to wondering, from existing as the gender assigned at birth to living one’s true gender, from child of parents to caregiver of parents. On and on. (I’m not overly interested in defining or debating change versus transition versus transformation. When the moment comes each of us knows in our own heart whether we have changed or transformed. And our knowing about our own life is all that matters.)
When a moth or a butterfly emerges from a cocoon, there is little to no resemblance, structurally, visibly, between the before and after. We don’t know–that is to say, I don’t know, maybe somebody does– if in their brains moths and butterflies feel the same or different than they did before their transformation. But from the outside, they are completely different creatures. What once was dissolves inside the cocoon and reconstitutes into a winged being we recognize as moth or butterfly.
For us, as human beings, transformation is more complicated–even if we don’t dissolve and reconstitute as completely different creatures. Sometimes, when we undergo a transformation, we feel, in our hearts and minds, like a brand new person, but to others nothing about us seems to have changed. Other times, when we transform–from merely existing or barely surviving as the gender we were assigned at birth into living as gender we truly and elementally are, for example–we look to others like a whole, brand new person, but feel like the person we have always been, only liberated.
At either of these two ends of the transformation spectrum (and all along it) it takes someone who knows us very well, someone who pays careful attention, to notice the full extent of our transformation. In the first case, to notice that our shift from one state of being to another, from addiction to sobriety, for example, has had a profound impact on our world view, our ability to inhabit previously accustomed spaces and roles, our sense of who we are in relation to family members and friends, and most importantly, our sense of who we are, full stop. And in the second instance, to see our eternal, essential self shining through and beyond the physical changes of gender affirmation, and clothing choices, and name and pronoun changes that might distract and mislead less careful, less loving, less respectful observers.
Life in relationship–and we’re all in relationship all of our lives–calls us to be careful, loving, respectful (and sometimes brave) observers of transformation in those around us. Further, life in relationship calls us to be guided in our behavior and interactions by the transformations we observe (or are informed of) in those with whom we are in relationship—family members, friends, church members, colleagues, students, neighbors. We don’t press alcohol on someone whose life has been transformed by recovery. We don’t use deadnames or incorrect pronouns of someone whose life has been transformed by gender affirmation.
We do celebrate with someone who tells us that their transformation–into parenthood or out of marriage, from civilian life into military service or vice versa, or any other transformation–is joyful and cause for celebration. Even if we don’t see cause for celebration or understand the joy. If someone we love undergoes a transformation that brings them joy we are called to be “the city [that] open[s] its mouth and [cries]: …What a prize /you are. What a lucky sack of stars.”
And if we’re the one who has transformed? Ah, well, then, it should be us crying “What a prize/you are. What a lucky sack of stars.” Right? But it’s not always automatic, is it, the joy–or even a neutral acceptance of transformation?
I said I wasn’t going to differentiate between change and transition or transformation–but maybe what distinguishes transformation from the other two is scale. Personal transformation can, perhaps, make us almost unrecognizable even to ourselves. Are we still ourselves sober, or without our late spouse or the partner we’ve separated from? After spending all of our adult life up to this moment in the military, who are we as a civilian? Is the professional, the wilderness adventurer, global traveler, life of the party, somewhere within the parent we’ve become or have they disappeared forever?
Transformation sounds as though it is something that happens with a kiss or the wave of a wand or a chanted incantation, then a cloud of colored smoke and a handsome prince stands where a frog or hideous beast once stood, or a magnificent carriage in place of a pumpkin. And then all is right with the world. Instant transformation. Instant acceptance of how one has been transformed. That’s the way it is in fairy tales (as they have been softened and prettied up for children). But our story this morning reminded us that though it is always there, sometimes magic (another word for transformation) takes its time. And in a poem that would have been one too many readings to read in its entirety this morning, May Sarton wrote
“Now I become myself. It's taken/Time, many years and places;/I have been dissolved and shaken,/Worn other people's faces,”
Often that’s the way our real life, human transformations happen. Slowly, over years, sometimes with the wearing of other faces for a time, or speaking with other voices–metaphorically–until one day it is all so obvious: this is who I am. Now I am myself. Because, speaking of fairy tales, remember, in Shrek, true love’s kiss transformed Fiona not from ogre by night/princess by day into princess day and night but rather into ogre day and night–for that was her true nature.
I said last week that we come to church to reckon with living in the uncertainty of now and into the uncertainty of the future. In a world that is telling us all the time, in a million different ways, who we should be or who we would be better off becoming, one of the greatest uncertainties is “am I truly who I am meant to be?”
As Fiona discovered, transformation isn’t always, in fact, very seldom is, something we can predict, much less direct. Rather, in the end, it springs from “resting in the trust/that creates the world.” Only then can we remember that last night we “ dreamt of flying.” Only then can the fear of change, the grief of loss, the anxiety of uncertainty, give way to the joy of becoming less who we are meant to be, and more who we truly always were–if we had but trusted ourselves.
Many of our Soul Matters themes this church year, including this month’s The Gift of Transformation, come from the values set forth in proposed revisions to the Article Two of the Unitarian Universalist Association by-laws. We value transformation of so many different kinds–healing the world, creating art, and loving people into the fullness of their being. Here in our Unitarian Universalist church home, may we engage wholeheartedly in the pursuit and midwifery of transformation wherever and whenever and however it waits for us to notice it–most especially the transformation of one another into whole new person and not a whole new person, all at the same time, over and over and over again. Amen
Story: Magic by Mirelle Ortega
Readings: Chrysalis Diary by Paul Fleischman
untitled poem by Karin Boye
At Last the New Arriving by Gabrielle Calvocoressi