How do we find our way through the many and challenging passages of life? How do we successfully transition – from one phase of life to another, one place of service to some new setting, from things comfortable and familiar to the prospect of something new?
Over the last months we have considered a natural and important first step. In times of transition, we remember things. We “go down to the crossroads” and “look for the ancient paths” (Jeremiah 6:16). We examine where we have come from, and where we find ourselves today. We remember the things that have worked through the years – and things, perhaps, that have not worked so well (cf. Haggai 1:7). We revisit our values. We reconsider our bases. We remember the story that has swept us up, and plays itself out in our lives.
Yet if all that we do is remember, we cannot transition successfully. Successful transitions are going somewhere. They will have their eye on the horizon. Successful transitions are not end-points, after all. They are mid-points, based in the premise that we have not arrived at the final chapter. Our story moves. Its themes develop. Ours is a story that is going somewhere. “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare…” (Isaiah 42:9). With St. Paul, we “press on…” (Philippians 3:14).
Successful transitions are rooted in the past, it is true. But they are geared toward the horizon.
I have known a few pilots through the years: we have more than one in the Home Office, believe it or not, and others scattered around the world. My pilot friends tell me that a critical piloting task – perhaps the critical task, in fact – is identifying the horizon. It is best that you see it right out the window. But experienced pilots will learn to fly “by instrument,” too. They will look to an artificial horizon displayed on an instrument panel, even on a cloudy day. A sense of the horizon will keep them upright and on course.
Losing a sense of the horizon, on the other hand, is a full-blown crisis: there are only a handful of ways that it can resolve, most of them bad. A pilot may climb, as if to reach an imagined horizon above her. This will end in a stall. A pilot may dive, as if to find an imagined horizon below. This will end badly, too. A pilot may error laterally, banking to the right or the left, inducing a spin. Strangely, the error may “feel” right. Your dive or spin may press you against your seat in a way that feels like normal gravity, as if you were right on course. But without a clear horizon, you may be entirely mistaken. Until the end.
So much of life is like this. We get all busy: but we don’t look out the window. We “feel” ourselves on course: but we lose sight of our basic bearing. We may feel a bit gravity, too, as if our maneuvers through life were steering us reliably. But it doesn’t always turn out that way: we are sometimes in a nose dive. Human projects and ambitions of every variety work this way, from time to time – from politics to parenting. And transitions can feel this way, too. The clouds, sometimes, roll in.
And then we must find the horizon.
So what do we see? What “horizon” can draw our attention forward, through the passages of life?
It is said that an organization’s vision needs refreshment from time to time – that we need to “reinvent” our horizons, now and again. Yet this language is not exactly correct, in my estimation.
Pilots do not “create” their horizon, after all: this would end in trouble. Pilots discover their horizon. They look to it. And it does not change much over time, either. If “horizons” are to be useful for general navigation, they must be high enough and broad enough to give overall stability to the world. They are not “reinvented” from generation to generation. They are passed on.
The “horizon” is pretty simple for organizations like ours. Good horizons are always pretty simple, actually: and if it does not always seem so, we are not looking high enough. “Horizons” are not the details beneath our feet. We don’t look down to find them; we look up. They are our “ends,” in the language of organizational theorists. They are our highest purposes and goals – the broad reason for which we exist as an organization. They are where we are headed, and why we do what we do.
We want to know Jesus. We want to make Jesus known.
In times of transition, we must keep our focus here – the broad horizon that can draw us forward. We “reach out to Christ” who “reaches out to us” (Philippians 3:12, The Message). Lest we spin right out of control.
Other posts in this Transitions series: