Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

"I know her well enough to be able to say that she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today," Bush said at his news conference Tuesday, adding later, "I don't want to put somebody on the bench who is this way today, and changes. That's not what I'm interested in."

What an interesting way to speak to Harriet Miers' qualifications for the Supreme Court. She's not going to change...ever! She'll be the same person with the same philosophy...sorta like if she'd been frozen in the interim, cryogenically stored, brought out only to give the decisions we damn well knew she was going to give and will keep on giving.

This is to be expected, I suppose, from an Administration that treats every hesitation or request for consultation in the face of complicated issues as evidence of weakness, that views an evolving viewpoint as flip-flopping, and that, rather than rethinking wrong-headed policies, prides itself on pushing even harder for those which have been stripped of every justification by the inconvenient imposition of reality. Their motto, fwiw, could rightly be, "We Never Change!"

But this goes far beyond the realm of politics, even, and speaks to a more fundamental understanding of the world, human nature, and the character of God.

I grew up believing that God was unchanging, even though the Bible told a very different story (and if you don't believe me, aside from reading the Bible itself, I highly recommend a book entitled God: A Biography by Jack Miles). It was an accepted part of the theology I grew up with, and I didn't really question it until I encountered Process Theology in theological school (thank you, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities!) Process theologians ask the very provocative (and so obvious, once I'd heard it) question: what's so great about never changing? Sure, God may be constant in some aspects, but unchanging? Why? How? In a universe that is all about evolving, could it be that the Divine is unable to join in the process? While we change and adapt and grow in our responses to the world, could it be that God is incapable of this? (And understand, if we say that God is unchanging it means, for all practical purposes, that God cannot change).

Of course, it's that whole evolving universe stuff that so unsettles some fundamentalists (no names, please). Change is bad. Change is weak. Change is of the devil. An evolving universe places us on shifting sand in our understanding of our place within it. Some of us still have not grasped the fact that it just may be possible that humans are not in the starring role in God's production, even though God pretty much says this to Job straight out (in a rather cranky fashion, I might add...I wouldn't want to risk challenging him on that point again).

To pride oneself on always being the same, and to project that sameness into an unknown future, seems to be a kind of insanity. How can we possibly know? And how can we possibly tell if we are at the place now where we always want to be?

On the other hand (and, on the risk of looking like a flip-flopper, I submit that there's almost always at least one more hand), don't we do some version of this when we say our vows to one another in marriage, when we commit ourselves to raising our children, when we pledge our friendship to another human being, our loyalty to a cause, our consistent support of the values we hold dear. We are looking into the future as best we can and promising that some things will not change...

And my guess is that, in these cases, we promise because we recognize the inevitability of change. Whatever changes come, we say, we will maintain our integrity and stay true to the commitments we have made today. However much our spirituality may evolve, our opinions may reshape in the light of new experience, our understanding of ourselves may expand, we pledge to live through those changes within the context of the promises we now make.

So, no, with all due respect, President Bush, I don't think anyone should promise to never change, and I can't imagine anyone asking for that promise. Besides, u-u-u-u-unchange doesn't have nearly the ring to it...