Ann Ferguson, one of my colleagues in the office here, is a big fan of that Leadership and the New Science chick, Margaret Wheatley. It is through her influence that all of us are now reading Wheatley’s new book, Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time as a group. As always, circumstances conspired against me to attend our last staff meeting, so I’m getting to the assigned reading about a month late.

Yet I found the first chapter well worth the time I took to read it. Wheatley proposes that we are in a period of transition from an old story to a new story—a paradigm shift, if you will. The old story, she says, is “a story of dominion and control, and all-encompassing materialism” (17) based on that Enlightenment belief that everything in the universe operates as a machine we can dissect and master. It is a fear-inducing story, too: as we try desperately to control our world, events from Hurricane Katrina to 9/11 conspire against us. We tighten our grip, attempting to bend the world’s mechanisms to our will. And they just won’t bend the way we want them to.

The new story, derived in part from spiritual and wisdom tradition, partly from new scientific discoveries, is one of embracing life in all its diversity. Life in our universe is always looking for ways to create and define itself. All life forms are also intricately related to other life forms—anyone who has sat through a science hall lecture on ecosystems can tell you that. Wheatley argues that in this new story, two forces bring about life: “the need to be free to create one’s self and the need to reach out for relationships with others” (27).

Wheatley is using this “new story” model to talk about the organizations that we work in, organizations like the corporate structure of the Presbyterian Church (USA). But her underlying theme draws me back to our faith story as Christians. When I go on the road to talk about women in the church, I share how the story of Christianity and women is all about the Holy Spirit—that creative force in life, the need to create something afresh, that finds its source in God. Women in the early church were missionaries, teachers, leaders of house churches. Women in the Middle Ages were visionaries and reformers. Women in this country were prophets and evangelists—I’ve read the story of one foremother of the Southern Baptists (ironically enough) who converted the entire jailhouse where she was being held for preaching illegally… and she was pregnant, too! Perhaps women, with their unique ability to bring forth life, are particularly attuned to this creative spark.

When I look at NNPCW, I think that it fits this new story of creating life and reaching out to others. Take our use of the consensus model of decision-making. We acknowledge the diversity in our midst, and rather than trying to squelch that into conformity, we use it to create something anew. Through that creative process, we also forge bonds of community with one another. This ministry isn’t about hierarchies or micromanaging, but about letting the creative juices of the Holy Spirit flow through us.

Indeed, there’s a certain level of idolatry in that old assumption that we can master the world. Today, as many of you know, is Ash Wednesday, the day when we are called to penance and remembrance of our own mortality. At our services here this morning, the minister reminded us that this day is about recognizing our own lack of control. You can sum up our attempts to dominate God’s creation in the words of the minister, as he spread the ashes on my forehead—“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” All the science, all the study, all the ways in which we attempt to protect ourselves from harm… they all end right there.

And yet it is through the fire of creation, that thirst for relationship with the Divine and one another, that we are living out the new story. God is constantly calling us to embody a new way of being, to deny the old and embrace the new. But doing that requires us to relinquish control, to turn away from the life that leads to death.

Perhaps a pertinent thought to consider on this day of penance.

“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’” --Mark 8:34-35

Kelsey