Change Is Good

Sometimes change is welcome. After trying the new translation Common English Bible for Lent, a welcome change for exploration, our parish returned for Easter to reading from the more familiar New Revised Standard Version in our services. Lots of Bible is read and heard in Episcopal worship, and the translation makes a difference to an ear that is tuned for nuance in Bible sounds. 

Of course, the NRSV itself is relatively new for us: until it arrived a quarter century ago we were reading from the Revised Standard Version, which is still my favored sound, a somewhat softened and easier to hear King James bible that we changed to when I was in high school. I’ve told that story here before, the fundamentalist explosion over the change of a word in Isaiah 7:14. Truth, I’ve observed that I also can be appalled, as I was with the NRSV addition of the word "when" to Genesis 1:1. Theologically it changed the notion of creation ex nihilo to the idea that the Word brought order out of existing chaos.

In truth, I don’t recall anyone mentioning our changing to the CEB for Lent; I honestly don’t think anyone noticed: I thought they would and was surprised, I don't know what people listen to these days. From NRSV to CEB was a bit raspy to my own ears, but that was the idea for Lent, wasn’t it. Change, repent, turn around and go in the opposite direction. One day I’d like to “repent” to the sublime KJV we used exclusively for worship when I was a boy. Advent, a short season of only four Sundays, could be the right time for that.

We’ve changed the south wall of our living room, the wall of windows looking out across St. Andrew Bay. A red chinoiserie desk that Linda’s mother bought on a whim in an oriental antique store in New York City back in the 1950s didn’t sell at the auction of dozens, hundreds actually, of items Specialists of the South (across from Jimmy’s Drive In on E. 6th Street) sold for us recently in our household downsizing. So this past week we picked it up and brought it home. Large, the desk mandated rearrangement of the living room furniture, but it’s good to have it home where it belongs. I’m so thankful it didn’t sell. Now if only we could get all that other stuff back, that made our houses home over our past nearly sixty years of marriage. It would be like repenting to the 1928 prayerbook, and I could go there in a minute, and repent to Anglican Chant. And never look back -- or ahead. 

Rearranging the south wall involved moving my window-side chair from the west corner to the east corner. Now instead of looking out at downtown Panama City, my view sweeps from Davis Point, across Shell Island and the Pass, and the highrises at BayPoint, around a long string of highrise condos at Panama City Beach. Change is good: I like this outlook better, for one thing because I can see large ships immediately they enter the Bay through the Pass, and watch their transit eastward in the north channel, turning to head west in the south channel, and pass close by my window. By then, I’m out on the balcony going aboard with the binoculars. 

The wideangle view this morning has a layer of fog at a distance over the Gulf, a thin cloud made bright by the lights below it.

Still and all, that proverb still sticks in my head, the old ways were best. 

TW+ in +Time