What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation. Galatians 6:15 (NLT)
Divine Flow – The Lent Series – Part 5
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
The word ‘transform’ comes from the word “Metamorphó,” which comes from the words: Metá, meaning “change after being with;” and Morphó, meaning “changing form in keeping with inner reality.” It’s where the word “Metamorphosis” comes from.
It’s not a simple change.
When we’re driving, and we need to change direction, we don’t say, “I’m just transforming my route…” (google maps, are you listening?).
Transformation is the result of a cataclysmic moment. You’ve been with someone or experienced something, and as a result, you are transformed. It changes your form, on a deep level, informing your inner reality.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
“So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
Lent is a journey of deep, life altering, never the same again, transformation. And that kind of transformation always feels like a death, a letting go; surrender. We have to let go of our ego’s, what we think we know, how we think it's supposed to be, and all the things that we think we absolutely must do. We surrender these things, especially during Lent, to reconnect into the Divine flow of grace.
In his Daily Meditations, Richard Rohr said: “Surrendering to the Divine Flow is not about giving up, giving in, capitulating, becoming a puppet, being naïve, being irresponsible, or stopping all planning and thinking. Surrender is about a peaceful inner opening that keeps the conduit of living water flowing. It is a quiet willingness to trust that you really are a beloved son or a beloved daughter, which allows God to be your Father and Mother. It really is that simple, which for the human ego is very hard.”
The scriptures are littered with transformation stories – it’s a sign post! That they didn’t always happen with loud introductions and an enraptured audiences, it wasn’t good fortune and fame and glory that midwived their changing. Their transformations came through struggle, hope, desire, despair, tragedy… just like you and me. Our problem is that we fight these pains and challenges rather than embracing them into ourselves to be transformed by them.
Lent is the season where we willfully surrender our innermost self to pain and challenge, to embrace not just inspirational change, but deep inner transformation.
How do we transform? Open hands, open heart. Surrender. Let go. Your life is a prayer, an invitation for the Divine to come and transform the deadness within you into resurrected life… Like spending forty days in the desert, alone and hungry and thirsty. Then returning to find you can turn water into wine.
Perhaps the transformation is less physical – image-driven and popularized – and more a movement of the heart and soul. A return to the love and wholeness that we were created from.
Go to Part 6 – The Stronghold (Digital Sabbath) »
Written by Lizzy Milani. Find me:
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