UCA SA - Reflection of the Week

What Penguins can teach us about Change in the Church

by Marianne Vreugdenhil

I recently learned that penguins undergo a process known as catastrophic moulting. Unlike other birds who lose their feathers over time, penguins shed the lot in two to three weeks. Once devoid of their warm, protective covering, they cannot swim for food, and without food, they have very little energy. The usual cacophony of honking, braying and chirping subsides, and they stand in stillness – a shoreline of silent, shivering sentries. This part of the cycle cannot be avoided or sped up. Instead, the penguins simply surrender to the natural order of things, and wait.

What can we in the Uniting Church learn from this? Alongside the hope and faith of our fellow church-goers, there is, for many, an understandable undercurrent of anxiety. We watch as congregations shrink – even close – and it can feel like a catastrophic ending. Where will we be in ten years, or even five? Has God abandoned us on a hillside, featherless and vulnerable?

But what if our human drive for constant expansion was never a part of God’s plan? What if, instead, there is a natural cycle of waxing and waning? Could it be that an essential part of Church growth is moulting? After all, the reason penguins moult is because new, unseen feathers are pushing up from underneath.

This makes me think of the role of stillness in our lives. Despite the coldness, the hunger, the seeming absence of protection, the penguins abide in that place, allowing space and time for transformation. Humans, on the other hand, have a habit of pretending our feathers aren’t falling.

Or we gather up our old feathers and attempt to stick them back in.

Or we try to fast-forward to the time of new feathers by frantically implementing hasty plans to ‘save the Church’, instead of trusting in God’s timing.

Heartfelt and sincere as these attempts may be, what if we are actually being called to abide in the stillness that comes with letting go of expectations and assumptions? Might this be the very thing that equips us to dive back into the ocean of action when the time comes? For as Samuel declares, may we know when to ‘stand still’ and ‘see this great thing the Lord is about to do before [our] eyes!’ (1 Sam 12:16).

And let us not forget that penguins prepare for their fast by nourishing themselves in advance. How might we as a Church nourish ourselves before we plunge into the time of moulting?

May we trust in new beginnings with hope in our hearts, for as Emily Dickinson says, ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’.