One of my favorite ways to explain major societal change is an image that I discovered many years ago. I think of it especially when I tend to watch too much news. Using that image, our country today might be thought of as a gigantic egg. We woke up several years ago to realize that this egg was covered with fine cracks. Each
month the cracks have seemed to get bigger and bigger. Some people have been hysterically running around with ropes and tape
and ladders trying to glue it all back together in a vain attempt to keep it "like it used to be!"
I grew up on a farm and I have some experience with chickens and eggs. I know that one of the dumbest things you can do when an egg is hatching is to try to tape it back together. To do so is to suffocate the new life inside that is trying to get out and to insure the death of the young chicken struggling to be born. As Jesus said, "Those who try to preserve their lives will lose them, while those who lose their lives will preserve them."
The best response to a cracking egg is to create an atmosphere where it can safely hatch! This image reminds me that our country is not falling apart,
but giving birth. Our country is not dying, it is giving birth to something new. It is absorbing a new wave of immigrants. It is going to be "browner." Women are going to be more visible and in more leadership positions. We can choose to be "midwives" in the birthing process or we can resist this birthing process and suffocate the very life we love so much and try to preserve!
There is no giving birth without pain. The birthing process can look and sound a lot like the dying process. Sometimes the screaming and yelling and struggling sound and appear very much the same. To some, what's happening in our country looks like a death. For others it looks like a birth. If you are a white male, the country may look like it is "falling apart" and your response might be panic and anger. You are tempted to stop the process and try to go back to the "good old days." If you are a person of color, an emerging woman or a discriminated against gay person, the country may look like it is finally "waking up to reality" and your response might be hope and relief.
The question facing us is whether we want to encourage the process and go forward to "better days" for "more people" or whether we want to resist the process in hopes of returning to the "good old days" for a "few people." Either way, we are probably in for a lot more struggles and pain until this "egg" fully hatches! Either way, we can't put this new "chick" back into the "egg." As Bob Dylan put it, "He not busy being born is busy dying!"
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