God is Change… And So Are You
intentional adaptation: element two of Emergent Strategy
Welcome to week three of our exploration of Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown!
Here’s an introduction to the series, and here’s a reflection on element one: fractals.
Soundtrack for this installment:
(lyrics)
Why did I pick this song? It’s a beautiful blend of bittersweet loss and hopeful resolve as a people leave some unnamed tragic horror behind and make their way into a new reality. I saw the Decemberists at Wolf Trap a couple years back, and hearing thousands of fans sing “hear all the bombs fade away”1 over and over and over was a live music moment I won’t soon forget. It was more than a refrain, it was a mantra. A prayer. (Here’s the band performing it in Sydney.)
It’s a fitting prelude as we take up element two of Emergent Strategy, the “heart” of brown’s work: intentional adaptation.
Here’s how brown describes this element:
adaptation: a change in a plant or animal that makes it better able to live in a particular place or situation; the process of changing to fit some purpose or situation
intention: the thing that you plan to do or achieve: an aim or purpose
(Emergent Strategy p. 67)
Emergent Strategy is inspired by the works of Octavia Butler, especially Parable of the Sower, in which we’re reminded:
“All that you touch you change.
All that you change changes you.
The only lasting truth is change.”“God is change.”
So I wrote this book on improvisation as an approach to life, and in my work around that topic I contend that God is always improvising with us. We’re not puppets at God’s command, but God’s nature is one of relationship and partnership, and for Christians, God enters human history in the flesh through the person of Jesus. So we work together to create a world worth living in. I believe that a loving God has ultimate ends in mind for us: Wholeness. Justice. Union. Shalom. Those values don’t change—they’re eternal and absolute. But the way we get there is endlessly variable, and dependent on our own freedom and action. How could love be otherwise? True love isn’t coercive or domineering.
I held back a bit in that work, talking about God as an improvising God, one of the characters in the scene if you will, engaging in a give and take with God’s people. I think I’d push the idea even further today and say that God is the improvisation itself.
That’s some of what I glean from brown’s discussion of intentional adaptation. The world is constantly acting upon us, roiling with change. In this season, some of us are facing for the first time a grim truth that many others have always known: the world doesn’t owe us stability, prosperity, comfort, certainty. Will we respond to this reality with fear that freezes us in place? Will we allow the most powerful voices to scapegoat the most vulnerable? Will we disappear down a vortex of furious doomscrolling?
Five years ago, we adapted. We learned how to Zoom and grouped into pods and grew sourdough starter and made masks out of t-shirts until better ones became available. And over time we got collectively tired of the whole thing and wanted to drink in bars again, damn it all, and turned vaccination itself into a partisan issue. Tougher times than those will come, and are already here, and God I hope we do better than we did by the end. But if we don’t, and the things we hold dear fall apart, we’ll adapt to that too, because what is the alternative? Here’s where it helps to remember that brown’s work is always fueled by joy and pleasure. “What is easy is sustainable,” she writes. “Birds coast when they can.” (Emergent Strategy, p. 72) So coast, Blue Roomies, whenever possible. Turn off the cable chatter and pocket the phone. Make the art and grow the peonies and place 5 calls and scritch your cat’s chin.
Meanwhile, as the world invites us (compels us?) to adapt, we’re also changing the world, “whether we like it or not,” as David Lamotte puts it. Our defeatism changes the world by moving it one tiny jot closer to entropy. And our stubborn refusal to give up and give in shifts us the other direction. Watch this wonderful news clip featuring a dear friend whose church helped clean up racist and antisemitic graffiti here in Northern Virginia.
“The only lasting truth is change.” And when we make conscious choices about how we want to be, that’s where the intention part of intentional adaptation comes in. I’m a big fan of intentions over goals, and brown spends a bit of time talking about how intentions allow for greater flexibility, trust, and even joy than rigid goals:
In my work with Allied Media Projects, the intentions were laid out as principles that guide our collective practices… they are so fundamental to my worldview: we begin by listening; we presume our power not our powerlessness; wherever there is a problem there are already people working on the solution; center and follow the innovative solutions that come from those living in intersecting crises, because those solutions work in the widest range of conditions. (Holding Change, p. 115)
Steady on.
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Your Turn
In Holding Change, brown suggests some questions for folks engaging in intentional adaptation. Consider one or more of these for yourself and the networks to which you belong.
What do we most want for our species?
What do we most want for our children’s children?
How do we want it to feel in the space between us?
How do we know where we belong, and who we belong to?
When do we get to just be?
In times of emergency, such questions may seem frivolous and naive. That’s when they’re most important. You’ve probably heard the idea, attributed to Martin Luther, Francis de Sales, and others: “Everyone of us needs half an hour of prayer every day, except when we are busy—then we need an hour.”
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What I’m Up To
I’m preaching this Sunday at 10:15 a.m. live or via livestream at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Herndon, VA. Also baptizing the cutest little Charlie-Brown-headed baby you’ve ever seen.
Supporting subscribers! Join Arianne Braithwaite Lehn and me on Monday as we talk about how to cultivate presence in the midst of ~gesturing at everything~. You’ll get a reminder and Zoom link in your inbox on Monday morning; join us live at noon EDT or view the recording later. If you’d like to join us but are unable to pay, please get in touch. Members and friends of Trinity Presbyterian, Herndon are eligible for complimentary gift subscriptions; just ask.
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Link Love
David Lamotte on why heroes don’t change the world:
Or is it “here all the bombs fade away”? 🧐