JULY Week 2. Spiritual Practice MAKING PEACE & MOVING ON Transition Material and Tradition Elements for this Block. Ecclesiastes 3:1: There s a season for everything and a time for every matter under the heavens. William Bridges, Transition: Making Sense of Life s Changes (Da Capo Press, 2004). Change occurs outside of us, e.g. starting a new job or moving to a new place. Transition is the internal adjustment we make as a change occurs. In other words, change follows the timing of a clock whereas transition follows the timing of the heart. - William Bridges Objectives. To offer participants an opportunity to begin letting go of their year of service and living into the new beginnings on the horizon. To provide a framework for thinking about the practice of transition. Background for Facilitator. This session is intended to offer volunteers a framework for thinking about the phases of transition. As their year of service draws to a close, volunteers are often at a loss as to how they might keep the valuable learning from the experience alive in their lives even as they move out into other situations and surroundings: How can I continue to live simply without others reminding me daily? How will I keep myself connected to the people in my neighborhood when my job no longer requires it? How can we work for justice when we lead rather comfortable or privileged lives ourselves? William Bridges offers a framework of three phases for transition: Letting Go, The Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings. This session focuses especially on letting go, in preparation for facing the coming neutral zone and unknown new beginnings from a healthy place. For this session, please plan to spend 90-100 minutes together. Materials You Will Need. Bibles Old magazines Scissors Glue sticks Large sheets of butcher paper Presentation of The Material. 15 min. Share the following outline of William Bridges three phases of transition. You ll want to have read through and gotten a grasp of the phases yourself before sharing them with volunteers.
You might also copy the diagram below and share it for a helpful visual representation of the stages of transition. Encourage volunteers to interrupt your presentations if they have questions about the material (saving reflections on their own personal examples for later). Say: William Bridges outlines the process of transition by breaking it up into three stages: letting go, the neutral zone, and a new beginning. We ll take a closer look at each of these phases, and as we do, be mindful of which stage you feel that you might be experiencing right now. Phase 1: Letting Go A transition begins when we acknowledge a loss and let go of a past identity. To successfully transition we need to deal adequately with endings, with their consequences, and with the risk of letting go. Phase 2: The Neutral Zone This is the time when the old way is gone, but our new identity is not yet clear. Marvelous growth is possible. Phase 3: New Beginning This final phase starts when we commit to new values, attitudes and a new identity. The new beginning is when we have made the interior conversions and convincingly see ourselves in a new role, relationship, or situation. A Closer Look......at "Letting Go" What s at Risk: Failure to let go could Lead to a subsequent disabling, chronic or unexplainable sense of loss. Foster the development of unhealthy attachments, to living in the past.
Delay consideration of new possibilities. What s Possible: Letting go Allows us to better handle the grief caused by the loss / change. Helps us, following a loss, face the uncertainty of the Neutral Zone. Gives us a chance to grow in new ways. Allows us to more aptly consider the new possibilities in the Neutral Zone. Suggestions for Letting Go: Develop a clear picture of what is actually going to change. Be honest about what you are really losing, including losses that are obscured by the obvious loss. Allow yourself time to grieve. Discern ways to compensate for the loss. Define clearly what s over and what s not. Mark or celebrate the ending. Honor the past rather than denigrate it. Give yourself a piece of the past to carry forward. Be open to new understandings and values connected with the new beginning you are transitioning to....at the "Neutral Zone" What's at Risk: During this time Old weaknesses can re-emerge. We can become stagnant in self-doubt. Instead of pursuing new possibilities productively, we may expend our energy simply coping. What s Possible: This is a time when Through creativity, we can experience breakthroughs, rather than breakdowns. We can break out of the false belief that whatever is is right. Discovery, innovation and personal enhancement are most possible. Suggestions for the Neutral Zone: Recognize that the journey from one identity to another is hard and it takes time. Expect ambiguity and confusion. Resist premature closure on a decision. Understand that this is a time of enormous change that needs to be managed. Ask questions, seek new solutions and new identities. Be creative; explore new and unusual ways of getting things done. Use both sides of the brain; shift perspectives. Re-define / Re-orient yourself; use the uncertainties of the Neutral Zone as opportunities for creative growth. Give yourself realistic, short-term objectives; keep track of good ideas. Embrace setbacks and losses as entry points for new solutions....at the "New Beginning" What s at Risk: New beginnings can
Re-activate the old anxieties associated with the ending of the old day. Trigger memories of past failures and their associated loss of self-esteem. Frighten us because they call for a new commitment. What s Possible: We can experience A strong sense of confidence that we know who we are. A celebration of having made a successful transition. A sense of well-being with where we are in our lives and where we are going. Suggestions for a New Beginning: Recognize that, while the start of an external change follows the timing of a preset schedule, beginnings follow the timing of the mind and heart. Stay focused. Keep in mind the purpose of your transition. Think about the ways the start of the external change is different from the beginning of your new identity. Give yourself quick successes, even if small, for they are affirming. Create a mental picture of the new beginning; use symbols of the new identity to reinforce it. Celebrate the successful beginning at the end of a transition. Reward yourself for having accomplished the transition. Be playful! Gut Response. 10 min. Ask volunteers what their initial reaction to these phases of transition is. Does it ring true to them? Have they recognized the process in their own lives in the past? Engagement of the Material: Group Activity. 20 min. Bring out stacks of old magazines, scissors and glue sticks. Tape a large sheet of butcher paper to the wall. Invite volunteers to spend a few minutes thinking about the impending transition in their lives finishing their year of service, moving away from this community, beginning something new. As they ponder what s coming up, ask them to begin thinking about the specific things that they will need to let go of. Instruct them to spend the next few minutes looking through the magazines and finding visual representations of those things, cutting them out, and pasting them to the butcher paper on the wall. As everyone adds their pieces to the paper, the group will create a collage of letting go. Group Reflection. 20 min. After the group has spent a few minutes creating the collage, invite them back into a time of discussion. Take the completed collage down from the wall and walk it through the group. Invite volunteers to comment on images they see and ask questions about what they might represent. Ask, what are the things that we are all letting go of, together? And what are the things that we have to let go of individually? Talk together about which things are really ending and which are not (for instance, sharing a house with each other will end, but the relationships need not be over). As the group moves through detailing the losses of transition, ask them how they will give themselves space to honor the past and be creative about making their way through the neutral zone. What are their realistic, short-term goals? What new ways of doing things will they try out? Pillar Signature: Journaling 5-10 min. Each Spiritual Practice block will include a time for journaling. Some of these practices lend
themselves naturally to journaling, and others are more active or focused on other sorts of activities. For each block of spiritual practice, invite volunteers to bring their journals and spend some time in the beginning of the session free-writing about how God has been at work in their lives recently, paying attention to where they ve seen God in their work, in their community life, in the world around them. For this month, invite volunteers to journal about their transition process: which phase are they in? What are they letting go of? How are they finding creative ways to move through the neutral zone? The Tradition. 5 min. Invite someone to read aloud Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11. Invite someone else to read the same passage, from another translation. Synthesis. 10 min. Take a few minutes to think and talk together about the question: What does it mean that God makes everything beautiful in its time? What does this mean for our own life transitions? Prayer. 5 min. Invite one of the volunteers to offer a prayer, remembering especially to ask for guidance in our times of transition, that we might trust God s leading and move gracefully through loss to new beginnings. ** additional resource materials/web links** William Bridges, Transition: Making Sense of Life s Changes (Da Capo Press, 2004).