Dear one,
Ps. I wrote the following prior to the “storming of the Capitol.” Refusing to don Pollyanna-lenses amid our shattered, national image—amid the soul-piercing hatreds and violence—may we nonetheless perceive “the new thing” throughout this “bitter winter.”
Without doubt, because the new year is here, my heart and mind have turned again to those ancient words of Isaiah:
“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19-20).
Writing to a people, who had seen their dreams dashed amid the rubble of scorched and razed cities; to a people, who knew the horror and terror of slavery: the shackles, the taunts, the brute-existence, Isaiah brought a “word of the LORD”: Don’t focus upon the past; rather, I am doing something new—like the first, faint signs of Spring. Do you not perceive it?
In truth, I find these words haunting, and not only at the onset of a new year: for well over thirty years, I have heard these words amid the rubble and taunts of my own shattered dreams. Admittedly, the traumas of my life pale dramatically when compared to those of Isaiah and his people—or those of the Holocaust, or of Stalin’s and Mao’s “cleansings.” Nonetheless, how does one not remember the past? Is not our present always shaped by the past? Of course it is.
However, as I’ve considered these two verses, I have found helpful: the Hebrew verb “to remember” is related to the noun, “memorial”; likewise, the English verb “to remember” is related to “memorial” or “monument,” and these latter two are derived from mens, the Latin for “mind.” In other words, “to remember” is an act of the mind, which, aided by imagination, can reconstruct mental “monuments” or “memorials.” Thus, we have the capacity to so fixate upon “former things,” somehow making of them a god, that we fail to perceive or experientially know what lies immediately before us.
Through Isaiah the word of the LORD was sure: “Don’t make the past a memorial or monument. Rather, perceive, sense, and know the new, which is budding-forth, as a crocus breaks the earth’s hard crust, as a rose blooms in the desert. I am still present: know me.”
In many regards, the year 2020 is still with us; however, there are signs which point away from “covid,” “virus,” “quarantine,” and “lockdown.” But we dare not make of 2020, or even of 2019, a measuring stone or monument; instead, let us look to and experience the One, who is bringing “rivers in the desert.” They are there, if we but cease reworking our memorials.
Hopefully,
Stan