Black Panther is a brilliant superhero movie, exciting and sort of fresh, introducing new characters, new places, new conflicts. Honestly, I didn’t lose my mind over the movie itself, like so many did. I did, however, lose my mind over the social/cultural implications. 

But these implications are not what I want to talk about, right now. I’d be happy to do that another time. But in Open magazine (where she expanded on an idea I read in the entertainment magazine I faithfully read), Lupita Nyong’o, who played Nakia in the movie, said, “I feel very encouraged with where we are, the fact that a movie like this exists. There’s a lot of shifting going on in culture that is very encouraging. But I think that change is not an event, it’s a process. And so that is what I’m focused on, and that is what I want to participate in, the actual process of change, and not just an event where somehow we think that we are all fixed.”

Yesterday, I wrote a post called Surrender. Last night, I read this quote: “Change is not an event, it’s a process.” The post and this quote share the same perspective. (I may have mentioned that I was being pursued by this teaching – EVERYWHERE I look and listen, almost as if by accident, it’s there, with a new facet to be held.)

So. We do not change overnight – we learn to surrender, forgive, release, or anything else that truly matters. This learning is full of stops and starts, chutes and ladders, and the ground we’ve covered can really only be seen in hindsight, when we look back and notice that who we are now bears small resemblance with who we were then. The view is exhilarating and getting there/noticing it requires great intention and attention, and should be appreciated, not overlooked.

Currently, we’re discussing work/rest rhythm on Sundays, and this is of course intimately related. We rest, we stop and breathe, look around, notice where we are, where we are going, where we have been, engage in the journey of our lives, 

and enjoy it.

Ecclesiastes says, “People should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.”     

Obviously, sometimes, the structures around us are broken and need to be confronted and corrected – and this confronting and correcting we must do. And in the words of Nyong’o, “that is what I’m focused on, and that is what I want to participate in, the actual process of change, and not just an event where somehow we think that we are all fixed.”

We are not all fixed, everything is in transition. The Bible is an account of movement, of participation. The story is going somewhere, we are going somewhere – and in the midst of all of this transition, where we often get and stay so busy and blind to the process, we have to pause to take in all of this beauty and wonder.

(This is an exciting time for me. I wonder what I’ll come across today…Maybe I’ll write again tomorrow.)