Spring and fall are my favorite seasons; obviously, that makes summer and winter my least favorites. Spring and fall are the dynamic seasons, the seasons of change—the wind blows, flowers bud, leaves tumble. This very moment, outside my windows, clouds rush by, the lighting changes, it rains, or even snows, then the sun comes out again. I like change, for its own sake. Perhaps I am easily bored. Give me something new, anytime, over the Same Old Thing.

My guess is that this is simply a personality type. Some people relish change; others abhor it. We all submit to it, of course—just look in the mirror. You’d think that the people who dislike change would be "conservative" in the political sense as well, but not necessarily. I have a friend who simply won’t throw anything away. His wife has to sneak the oldest, rattiest things to the trash when he isn’t looking, and hope he doesn’t notice. He’s a liberal Democrat.

Of course, the comfortable are more likely to embrace the status quo. I recall an old cartoon from the New Yorker that pretty much sums it up: Two men on a patio overlooking a huge expanse of lawn and weeping willow and swimming pool and flower beds, drinks in hand. Says one: "I don’t know why everyone’s always complaining about the environment!" Yet here again, it seems to be personality: I am pretty comfortable, with my cozy little house in Angwin, my cats, my tea, my bike rides, my interesting job teaching college students to write and read and think. But I still keep my eyes focused on the horizon for signs of something about to happen, something interesting that will make tomorrow just a wee bit different from today.

I’ve been talking about positive, or at the very least neutral change, however. Nobody likes negative change: a beloved pet dies, an old tree falls, a friend gets multiple sclerosis. These are not what I had in mind. But the sudden visit from someone I hadn’t seen in thirty years, the "humble pie" at my office door from a student apologizing for whispering too much in the back row, the perfect linen dress waiting for me at my favorite thrift store—these are changes I can appreciate.

At Pacific Union College we’ve been having a lively discussion about a change in the wind: the sale of about one-tenth of PUC’s large landholdings. Some people just don’t think we should sell that land ever, to anyone, for any reason. To me, it looks like nostalgia: if you sell the land, something will change. Things won’t be the way they were. Others oppose the sale because the highest bidder will probably be a grower of grapes, and we’re not talking Thompson Seedless here. The land will probably be most valuable to someone who grows varietal wine grapes. Land that belonged to an Seventh-day Adventist institution would be owned by someone making money from the sale of wine. Opponents see this as more than simply a negative change they would like to prevent; to them this is evil, and they should do everything in their power to prevent it.

To others, the sale is necessitated by another, more gradual change, an evil if you will: many people who work for the college can’t afford to live in Angwin anymore. As housing prices in the Napa Valley have exploded (skyrocketed, gone through the roof—choose your violent cliché), more and more people have discovered the peaceful little town on the hill. There are more non-SDA’s living in Angwin than ever before. In many ways this is good, but it does mean that people who work for the college are now trying to buy or even rent in a market that their wages simply cannot accommodate. "Sacrificial wages" are all very well, but what about our other values, like owning a home and sending the kids to church school? At our "sister" schools, Andrews or Southwestern or Southern, this is possible. How can we invite people to come here when we have nowhere for them to live?

And so the board decides finally to put land up for sale, to form an endowment to provide funds to develop affordable houses for PUC faculty and staff. If it happens, it will be a big change, not just trees coming down and tractors droning by, but also sewers and street lights where now there are very quiet forests, full of deer and owls and foxes—even mountain lions and, they say, bears. It will mean large machinery and large noises. But also houses for people. New teachers when old teachers retire. People to fix the computers and the food and the roofs.

Are changes good or bad? Both. Almost always, both. And we weigh them in the scales of our value system. What is more important, not selling land to the wine industry, or having houses for faculty, staff, and their families? People—good, thoughtful people—have different answers to this question. And so we talk, and argue, and e-mail, and write in the paper. But eventually someone makes a decision. And no matter what, things change.

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