Who Me? A Prophet??

As If by Magic...

Last Word or First…?

Choose your poison…
or not!

Darkness Giving
Way to Light...?

Time To Say Yes

Of Science, Oatmeal
and Meaning

The Cypress in the Garden:
A Koan Revisited…

Divine Hospitality
at Work...

For the Time Being...
Some Thoughts on the Stewardship of Time

Darkness Giving Way to Light...?
On the Eve of the New Millennium

By Whitney Wherrett Roberson

So here I am: sitting at my desk, wondering what wise and clever thing I can write on the eve of a new millennium. Truth is, I don’t think a whole lot about the turn of the millennium: part of me is in deep denial, I suspect. After all, I’m going to wake up on January 1st and things are probably going to be pretty much they way they were when I woke up on December 31st.  (I’m not one of those who worries overly much about the Y2K gremlins: more denial?  I’ll know soon enough...!)  And yet, this isn’t an ordinary transition, and I’m finding that something in me does want to pay a little closer attention, to think a little more deeply about who I am and about these times in which we live....  

Maybe that’s why I noticed something that’s never occurred to me before: as we’ve arranged our calendar, the New Year always comes at the darkest time of the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere.) Actually, it’s a few days after the Winter Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year, a turning point of sorts when darkness begins to give way to light. I turn the idea over and over in my mind: darkness into light, a turning point ... a pivotal moment... surely the turn of the millennium must be something of this sort.... And I find myself recalling vaguely an expression I ran across my first year of graduate school when I read futurist Alvin Toffler’s stimulating trilogy which began with FutureShock in 1970, continued with The Third Wave in 1980 and concluded with Powershift in 1990.  So I leave the computer and rummage in my box of old papers.  My search is rewarded: I find the reference, although Toffler spoke not of “pivotal moments” but of “pivotal minorities.”  

  I’m intrigued, though, and begin to re-read what I wrote six years ago.  I was describing the pessimism I’d encountered in my reading: the concern that the demands of our times were overwhelming the cultural and organizational structures we’d evolved to deal with them.  Would we be able to change fast enough to avoid catastrophe?  Toffler was not especially hopeful, and yet, he did point to something chaos theory scientists were discovering: that when a system, whether natural or human,  is in a state of dis-equilibrium it becomes very sensitive to minor changes which ordinarily would not impact the system significantly.  In the case of social systems, dis-equilibrium makes it possible for “pivotal minorities” to have a greater-than-normal influence on the future.  Toffler feared the possible catastrophic effect of extremist groups.  

Still, as I sit here, contemplating the millennial turning point we’re rapidly approaching, I wonder: what’s to say a “pivotal minority” couldn’t be positive, effecting a greater integration, or a deeper tolerance, or a wiser vision of the whole?  What does it take, I wonder, to be such a “pivotal minority” in the workplace: a change-agent: “the right person at the right time?”  I’m not sure. When all hell is breaking loose (my rough and slightly theological description of a system in chaos...) it’s hard to know just what to do.  After all, anyone who stands out in such a situation may get hammered.  Better perhaps to duck and cover, fade into the woodwork or try to intuit the way the system’s moving and go with the flow, appearing to be a leader (like so many of our politicians.…) But then that’s the point: in a chaotic system, it’s difficult to predict which way the system’s moving: “going with the flow” may mean exiting down the nearest drain...  

I wonder if this is where spirituality comes into play.  Mother Teresa used to say, “You don’t have to be successful; only faithful.”  My hunch is that “being faithful” is a piece of what it takes to become a “pivotal minority” at a “pivotal moment.” It means holding to a vision of a deeper Wholeness which contains even our chaos; it means being willing to take leadership, make real choices based on that vision and sometimes it means speaking into the chaos a word of truth as we see it. 

Maybe it means being able to imagine the light at the time of greatest darkness....