NEW YEAR, NEW DECADE

When I left the car auction ten days ago, I was wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  A car dealer, the fellow I know as Sam who hails from Somalia, responded with a smile and said to me, "Happy New Decade!"  It stopped me in my tracks as I realized the truth of his salutation...which I have shamelessly used a dozen times since he offered it. Twenty-twenty... it really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

As the last days of the year unfold, I find myself drawn to an annual exercise is crystal ball gazing.  I survey several different news feeds on the web and pour over the year-end edition of the Economist; everywhere I look, I see one central theme: uncertainty.  The twenty-tens are closing in a haze of ambiguity.  Across Canada and around the world, I'm confronted with unresolved situations in every sphere of endeavour: international trade; the rule of law; social justice; climate change; national politics; world and regional economics...you name it.  The dominant characteristic is uncertainty. 

One pundit wrote: "Uncertainty is the enemy of progress; if uncertainty becomes sustained, it devolves into fear.  Fear is an emotion powerful enough to pull everything and anything down with it".  Whoa - just wait a minute!  That's a long leap from uncertainty to collapse.

I have always believed that times of uncertainty, distressing as they might be, are times of opportunity.  Uncertainty and change arrive on our doorstep like evil twins.  They disrupt our steady state, they challenge our expectations, they loosen the cement that holds our foundations firm.  Uncertainty and change also force us to look at how and why we do things, with the follow-on step of doing things differently and ultimately, doing new, different things.

And so, approaching a new year and new decade, I'm more excited about the opportunity than I am concerned about the uncertainty.  As First United seeks a path for transition and renewal of its mission and ministry, I'm drawn to the question that challenges all of us in times of uncertainty: what would we do if we weren't afraid to fail? 

We could literally do anything together.  Let's ring the bell...together.

Pat...still

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

~ Leonard Cohen, Anthem, 1992 ~