Sunday Services
Change Matters
Theme: Joy
June 18, 2017
Rev. Kikanza Nuri-Robbins
WHO MOVED MY CHEESE?
Spencer Johnson
Read the book, watch the movie on YouTube
Two mice: Sniff and Scurry and their neighbors
two little people: Hem and Haw
Every morning they would get up,
put on their sneakers, and
race around the maze to find the cheese for the day
Soon realized that their cheese was in the same place – every day
In the beginning Hem and Haw raced toward Cheese Station C
every morning to enjoy the tasty new morsels that awaited them.
But after a while, a different routine set in for the little people.
Hem and Haw awoke each day a little later,
dressed a little slower, and walked to Cheese Station C.
After all, they knew where the cheese was
and how to get there.
They had no idea where the cheese came from,
or who put it there.
They just assumed it would be there.
As soon as Hem and Haw arrived at Cheese Station C each morning,
they settled in and made themselves at home.
They hung up their jogging shoes and put on their slippers.
They were became very comfortable now that they had found the cheese.
THEN ONE DAY
the cheese wasn’t there
Someone had moved the cheese!
Hem and Haw ran around in circles, screaming
Who moved the cheese?
Sniff and Scurry had already been to Cheese Station C
Discovered that the cheese had been moved
And were off in search of the new Cheese Station
Hem and Haw whined and moaned and complained
Here is what they ultimately learned:
Change Happens
They Keep Moving the Cheese
Anticipate Change
Get Ready for The Cheese to Move
Monitor Change
Smell the Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old
Adapt to Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese
You have to Change to survive
Move with The Cheese
Enjoy Change!
Savor the Adventure and Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!
Be Ready to Change Quickly and Enjoy It Again
They Keep Moving the Cheese.
Think:
Has your cheese been moved recently? Who moved it?
Do you know Why? Were you ready?
William Bridges
Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change
• Change starts with endings. People have to admit they are saying goodbye....
o Long goodbye for Rebecca
o Some ready to move forward – don’t mention her name
o Others still weeping in her empty office
o We helped Rebecca say goodbye with grace and dignity
o Have you said goodbye to the things you have lost?
o Are you still hurt, angry, disbelieving?
o Perhaps you are annoyed that people don’t getthis is the way life is.
I walked into my therapists’ office one day...
So in addition to expecting that one day the cheese will be in a new place
We have to accept that sometimes we’ll like the cheese, sometimes we won’t
That sometimes there will be enough cheese
And other times, no matter how much is there it won’t feel like enough
Some people say it is about the journey, not the destination
Perhaps that is because
• People tend to focus on moving from the present state to the future state without managing the transition.
• Change happens most effectively when the transition is managed vigilantly
• Poorly managed transitions are costly.
What is the pattern you see in your personal change processes?
• A few Successful Changes you have made
• A few Unsuccessful Changes you have tried to make
• And what have you learned from both situations
• I have learned that nothing is all good or all bad.
In its absence, you will also miss the source of your pain.
o My friend was married to a difficult man for 50 years and when he finally died she cried.
o I don’t understand why I am crying, she told me
o I said, if you had had a toothache for 50 years, when the pain stopped, you would miss it
What is important for all of us
Is to rely on the many resources we have around us
to adjust to the change
And to prepare for the next one.
Because nothing that is living and healthy doesn’t change
It is Father’s Day, and
it just wouldn’t be right
to let it pass without telling a story
about my father.
One of the things that has changed in my life was
my relationship with and attitude toward my father.
My parents met in college in Boston.
My father was at Boston University right next to Fenway Park
And my mother was in a music conservatory – which is no longer there.
They were divorced when I was very young and
I grew up with a stepfather who was in the Navy.
My mother shared her love of music with all of her children.
She taught us to play and to sing
and family time often involved harmonizing with one another
as we gathered around the piano.
I also loved to listen to my mother play the piano.
I remember dropping to the floor, as she played,
sitting near the far-left end of the piano,
so that I could feel the vibration of the piano
when she played the bass keys.
I always loved the bass notes.
When I listened to the radio or the stereo,
even as a child, I would turn up the bass
so I could hear and feel, those deep, low notes.
I was an odd child – some would say I am still odd --
because the other thing I loved as a child
was the smell of pipe tobacco.
I had a lot of allergies and
was very sensitive to cigarette smoke,
but pipe smoke didn’t seem to bother me.
I was always drawn to men who smoked pipes and
I savored the aroma of the pipe tobacco.
After moving back and forth across the country a couple of times,
we settled in California,
and our east coast relatives would come to visit us,
or send their children, my cousins, for the summer.
I did not like this.
We already had a house full of children
and having visitors meant
there would be more people to share with.
Selfish, I know, but that is how I felt.
Biological relatives were strangers
that you had to be nice to, and
who disrupted the routine
of my adolescent social calendar.
By the time I went away to college,
I decided that it was also time for me to reconnect
with my biological father
and learn something about his relatives –
my other family.
I hadn’t seen them since I was a small child,
so I was curious and anxious
because I knew what it was like
to meet relatives who were strangers.
I was pretty sure that this part of my family
would be just as courteous, and
just as unwelcoming
as I had been to the cousins
who visited me in the summers of my childhood.
---
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The first time I went to my father’s home
in New York, the house was filled with people.
It was as though I had stepped out
to run a last-minute errand and
they had waited for me to return
before the party began.
These people had held a space in their hearts,
open for me, waiting for my return.
Fascinating-- family was a group of people
who loved you even though they didn’t know you
--a new concept for me.
That is also when I got my first West Indian Bangles
The women who were there, took them off their arms
and gave them to me.
The other surprise came as I got to know my father.
I learned that he, too, was a musician and
his instrument was the bass.
I also learned that he smoked a pipe.
It didn’t take me long to make the connection.
My love of the bass line in music and
my attraction to the aroma of pipe smoke
had nothing to do with music or tobacco.
It was my three-year-old memory of my father.
And with that visit the idea of family changed for me
I think the Love in the Universe is like
the music and smoke that called to me as a child.
It may be so much a part of the environment
most people don’t even notice it.
It may be like the family that I met as a young adult.
Holding a space for us
To remember who we truly are
And to find a way to reconnect or strengthen our connection
Like my father’s tobacco smoke
Love is all around us.
Like the family I met when I was 20
Our Universal family may be right next to us.
Inexplicably drawing us to it
As this Community of Covenant
waits for us to enter through the door and take our seat.
I dpnt know many people who are celebrating Father’s Day today
Your father may not have been what you wanted or expected
Or he may have been as one friend said about her father,
He was An Englightened Being
Whoever fathered you
Has given you a legacy of family that
you can Continue or you can change
That’s the thing about changes
They always present us with choices
Some we like, some we don’t like, and
Some that surprise us beyond our imagination.
The only way you can learn what those changes will be
Is to start – or to continue the journey
As the poet David Whyte suggests...
Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.
Start with the ground you know,
the pale ground beneath your feet,
your own way of starting
the conversation. ...
© Kikanza Nuri-Robins www.KikanzaNuriRobins.com
Prepared for UUSM June 18, 2017