Fractals

I love fractal designs. Some part of me delights in seeing a pattern replicated at multiple levels. When we look at natural patterns, we might see fractals in trees and ferns, seashells and spiral galaxies, the neurons in our brains and the blood vessels in our lungs.

I think I learn and grow in fractals, too. I live some lessons over and over again before I feel a sense of mastery. But each time I face the same challenge, I have a slightly different perspective. I’ve grown a little bit from prior experience, but I’m not quite done learning that lesson as deeply as I could.

The thing about learning in fractals is I have to be willing to keep learning. I have to be open to something taking time. I have to let it be OK that I spiral past a lesson a few times before really feeling a shift in how I embody a new way of being.

A part of me thinks I should be better at learning things. That part of me wants to feel ashamed about not getting lessons perfectly the first time. I know that part of me means well, but sometimes it keeps me from growing into a fuller incarnation of my values.

I’m also tempted to feel absolutely (unreasonably) certain about a lot of things. What other people are thinking. The way things should be. The way I should be. The part of me that wants to feel ashamed about not learning something perfectly the first time around also loves for me to feel certain that I understand something immediately at first blush.

It feels safer to have certainty than for things to be evolving in ways I can’t completely predict and prepare for. And growth sometimes means allowing things (or myself) to evolve in ways I can’t completely predict or be prepared for. 

So, I wind up learning in fractals. And over time, hopefully, I grow into greater integrity with my life-affirming values. I show up as a more fully authentic Self. Hopefully.

This is going to be a year of exploration for us. Just as we’re engaging in curiosity and wonder about how nature tells us something about ourselves (and maybe the divine), we’ll be engaging in curiosity and wonder about who we might become. We’ll be envisioning a future we can’t completely predict. We’ll be living in liminal space.

Specifically, we’ll be deepening our exploration of the proposed revision to Article II of our Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws. We’ll be trying on a new way of expressing who we are as a spiritual community. A different framework for what our faith tradition has to offer the world.

We’re not just going to talk about it. Or weigh imagined worst case predictions against the certainty of the past. We need to live it for awhile before we can know whether we want to make an informed commitment to embrace it, or whether our collective spiritual identity would be best expressed in some other way.  

So, I hope that we will allow things to take time. That we’ll give ourselves permission to spiral past an idea a few times. Let wonder and curiosity be stronger than our desire for certainty. Maybe the fractal designs in nature can be a reminder that sometimes we need to experience things at different levels before we really know them. 

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