Day 14: Isaiah Discussed -part 1 of 2
Thank you to everyone who read and commented on my post about Isaiah and how he bugs me. He hasn't stopped bugging me but there has been some relief.
Let me see if I can recap:
Day 9: I was reading the Hebrew Bible text of Isaiah, working through the historical period of the prophet (730s-680s bce). I have also been following how his text was edited/added to to help sediment the beliefs and practices that rose out of the Babylonian exile (597-538 bce).
What was bothering me as I read was something that has ALWAYS bothered me about the Hebrew Bible: this idea of a "tough love" God who punishes and redeems his people. So yes, the people of Israel turn from God, they have "foresaken the Lord" (Is 1:4) and thus are at risk from the Assyrians (the Northern Kingdom gets it from them but Judah and Jerusalem is spared), are then taken captive by the Babylonians, and watch the rest of the region get sucked up by war. It is only when the Persians in turn kick Babylonian butt that the people of Israel--those folks who have been living along the banks of the Jordan between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee--get to come BACK to this land and settle it anew. There is all manner of imagery for this restored, triumphant group in the text:
(I quote at length because it is just so overdone)
11 "O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
I will build you with stones of turquoise, [a]
your foundations with sapphires. [b]
12 I will make your battlements of rubies,
your gates of sparkling jewels,
and all your walls of precious stones.
13 All your sons will be taught by the LORD,
and great will be your children's peace.
14 In righteousness you will be established:
Tyranny will be far from you;
you will have nothing to fear.
Terror will be far removed;
it will not come near you.
15 If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing;
whoever attacks you will surrender to you.
16 "See, it is I who created the blacksmith
who fans the coals into flame
and forges a weapon fit for its work.
And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc;
17 no weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
and this is their vindication from me,"
declares the LORD.
So, the basic story of Isaiah is that Israel is blind and deaf to the LORD, thus are ripened for God's judgment of them. It is the Lord who permits, even enacts, this judgment, reducing his people to a stump. I just never understood if God is so good, then what is with all the burning of cities and drying up of wells and so forth? Only to then give them a shiny city and justice and peace? Why would a people follow this God? We know there were others around--all very tempting with their fancy golden calfs and such--so why stick with the God who was only so happy to act or retreat whenever he darn well felt like it?
Asked in another way (on Day 9)
I just don't understand the love that wants to cut in order to heal. I get the medical principle. But the relational or spiritual principle?So, here are some thoughts, based on conversations growing out of comments, conversation, and reading:
1. It isn't that spiritual lessons require great pain, but that great pain--when it is survived and lived through in the company of ritual practices and community brings spiritual understanding.
This is what I think fivebells is saying when he includes the poetry from T.S. Eliot about
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
I cannot write enough perhaps to satisfy the careful exegete, but I believe the message is that we are ALL wounded through living and that only those who look seek healing will find out how they can heal and then become healers to others.
1.A. Because the pain is so unfounded or illogical or resistant to the standard methods of cause/effect, we "spiritualize" the pain and ascribe it to God.
For example, if you had a thorn, you remove it. But we get these ideas stuck in our heads from times in our pasts (past lives, even, some Buddhists would say) and so can't just reach for tweezers. It isn't a simple procedure. Where religion comes into play in this common human experience is that they have independently crafted methods for addressing these kinds of emotional pain. Perhaps this is in part how one can understand what fivebells is saying about the wrathful deities in Vajrayana Buddhism. I also think it is what happens in Eliot in his explictly Christian message about the source of healing.
And so I think that the author of "cutting and healing" is looking in a similar direction when s/he writes about uncomfortable change.
Isaiah puts the costs in a visible, painful scenario to bring home the point that change really ISN'T easy, and darn it, making that change will leave a mark.
1. B. Yes, we are changed--and that change may scar and serve as a reminder of who we were. For example, I can think of how my selfishness damaged several friendships. Relationships can be hard to repair, much like our health.
What I want to add two other general operating assumptions with change. The first is that we know what we desire and we can imagine what it means to have this desire met. In this first case, change is something we want to happen and we know in fair approximation of how much better we will feel when this change is fulfilled. The second is that in our scientific era, we want and expect that we can AND SHOULD anticipate the results of our efforts, thus finding the most "effective" methods of change. In both of these assumptions--which I think are just fine to have--are that we 1. know what we want and 2. know how to get it.
A completely other kind of change that is harder to want is change that we CANNOT imagine the result of. This, I think, is what people say when it is in "God's hand" and how they experience a lightness of being in that understanding.
Now, I am not one generally who gets a lot out of crediting God or asking that it be placed in his hand. Not because it doesn't give humans freedom, but perhaps because it doesn't account for the fullest range of possibility. In taking the example from "cutting and healing," there is a desire for change but something that isn't making this possible. We say it is a lack of will, but I don't think that by naming it as a weakness of choice, we are any closer to changing the behavior. Such scenarios of change put us at odds between our desire to be just who we are and some very-good-but-bossy-part-of-us who wants us to be different. We want something to be different but we don't know exactly what to hold on to or to let go of, fearful of letting go of the "wrong" thing or of changing the part that is the good stuff. This is, I believe, in part the problem of the metaphor of surgery for healing: it sounds too human, too knowledgable.
1. C. A kind of change that is harder to want is change that we cannot imagine THE RESULT OF and we cannot ascribe A CAUSE TO.
The issue of cutting out or burning out a part of us in order to heal can work if there is a powerful, compassionate God ready at hand to mold us. But I just don't know if that God is so easily accessible or if we really know how to surrender our will/desire. This is (again) for two reasons: One, God's Plan has been overdetermined for too long and while I respect that invoking God as the source of transformation lends authority and mystery to that transformation, I think we secretly *think* we know what God wants because we have been told in church/society so much that it is hard to not try to control the future. Second, while "letting go and letting God" lifts it from human calculation and causation, it also prescribes a series of actions that one is to take to ensure the divineness of this change, i.e. prayer, church attendance, correct amounts of action and release, etc. It tends to get complicated of what it means to REALLY hand it over to "God" and we find ourselves second-guessing this choice when it isn't moving fast enough or when suspect or are told that we aren't relinquishing enough control. We get tangled in what we are supposed to do while God is In Charge.
To want change what we can't control is to act faithfully with the tools we have and not anticipate that we know what we will feel like when we have been transformed: only that we will be in a different place and that it may still hurt, it won't be * this* hurt any longer. And this will be a relief. One can start to get rather picky about what "faithfully" means, or which faith you need to abide by (which I will discuss in part 2 of my Isaiah Treatise) but what does faithfully mean TO YOU? This means finding something that works, something you trust that brings you joy/comfort, and doing it with regularity. Do it faithfully. Be mindful of what changes in your life just by doing one thing with great care and diligence. See if you feel differently after a couple of weeks. And then note 'what is different?" Be willing to change or continue, but always choosing something that you trust/know that brings you comfort or joy. Something really satisfying.
This has been a long post, and I have more to say about the historical situation of the People of Israel and why they --and we even--might buy into a tough love God, but I have another story about how healing happens, told to me this week under different circumstances but I think it applies.
An old man appeared to the long houses of several clans of the Iroquois nation. He was a sick and elderly man, and he went to each longhouse asking for shelter and food. The wolf clan, the turtle clan, the eel clan; the heron, the snipe, and the beaver clan--each of these longhouses refused him, saying that he could not receive the care he was looking for with them and they had no time to care for an elderly man. Bu the man kept up his search and came to the longhouse of the bear clan. Here, he was welcome and he took up a bed in the corner of the longhouse. He soon started to ask for herbs from his bed, saying that if he had a particular plant, perhaps it would heal him. And so people of the longhouse went and gathered this herb and that, bringing it back to him. He would then, in the company of others, prepare the herb and treat himself. And his health would improve. With each ailment, the man would request another herb, and would be slowly and steadly healed. One day, the members of the longhouse came and found a young and healthy man standing the doorway, casting a great shadow into the longhouse. The immediately recognized him as the Creator. He said to them: "I am the elderly man whom you welcomed. Because of your patience in caring for me, you have learned about the many ways the earth provides for healing. Because you possess this wisdom now, you will be the healers of the nation."
Even here, the people come to know the source, cause and result of healing. But in the midst of it, they didn't know. They just lived faithfully.
If I have been unclear or confusing, please respond and let me know what might help. I'm curious about how to generalize and psychologize the scriptural text for people outside of the tradition without ignoring what makes the tradition profound and puts so much at stake in it for those who are invested personally and those who are personally and culturally affected.
Let me see if I can recap:
Day 9: I was reading the Hebrew Bible text of Isaiah, working through the historical period of the prophet (730s-680s bce). I have also been following how his text was edited/added to to help sediment the beliefs and practices that rose out of the Babylonian exile (597-538 bce).
What was bothering me as I read was something that has ALWAYS bothered me about the Hebrew Bible: this idea of a "tough love" God who punishes and redeems his people. So yes, the people of Israel turn from God, they have "foresaken the Lord" (Is 1:4) and thus are at risk from the Assyrians (the Northern Kingdom gets it from them but Judah and Jerusalem is spared), are then taken captive by the Babylonians, and watch the rest of the region get sucked up by war. It is only when the Persians in turn kick Babylonian butt that the people of Israel--those folks who have been living along the banks of the Jordan between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee--get to come BACK to this land and settle it anew. There is all manner of imagery for this restored, triumphant group in the text:
(I quote at length because it is just so overdone)
11 "O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted,
I will build you with stones of turquoise, [a]
your foundations with sapphires. [b]
12 I will make your battlements of rubies,
your gates of sparkling jewels,
and all your walls of precious stones.
13 All your sons will be taught by the LORD,
and great will be your children's peace.
14 In righteousness you will be established:
Tyranny will be far from you;
you will have nothing to fear.
Terror will be far removed;
it will not come near you.
15 If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing;
whoever attacks you will surrender to you.
16 "See, it is I who created the blacksmith
who fans the coals into flame
and forges a weapon fit for its work.
And it is I who have created the destroyer to work havoc;
17 no weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
and this is their vindication from me,"
declares the LORD.
So, the basic story of Isaiah is that Israel is blind and deaf to the LORD, thus are ripened for God's judgment of them. It is the Lord who permits, even enacts, this judgment, reducing his people to a stump. I just never understood if God is so good, then what is with all the burning of cities and drying up of wells and so forth? Only to then give them a shiny city and justice and peace? Why would a people follow this God? We know there were others around--all very tempting with their fancy golden calfs and such--so why stick with the God who was only so happy to act or retreat whenever he darn well felt like it?
Asked in another way (on Day 9)
I just don't understand the love that wants to cut in order to heal. I get the medical principle. But the relational or spiritual principle?So, here are some thoughts, based on conversations growing out of comments, conversation, and reading:
1. It isn't that spiritual lessons require great pain, but that great pain--when it is survived and lived through in the company of ritual practices and community brings spiritual understanding.
This is what I think fivebells is saying when he includes the poetry from T.S. Eliot about
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
I cannot write enough perhaps to satisfy the careful exegete, but I believe the message is that we are ALL wounded through living and that only those who look seek healing will find out how they can heal and then become healers to others.
1.A. Because the pain is so unfounded or illogical or resistant to the standard methods of cause/effect, we "spiritualize" the pain and ascribe it to God.
For example, if you had a thorn, you remove it. But we get these ideas stuck in our heads from times in our pasts (past lives, even, some Buddhists would say) and so can't just reach for tweezers. It isn't a simple procedure. Where religion comes into play in this common human experience is that they have independently crafted methods for addressing these kinds of emotional pain. Perhaps this is in part how one can understand what fivebells is saying about the wrathful deities in Vajrayana Buddhism. I also think it is what happens in Eliot in his explictly Christian message about the source of healing.
And so I think that the author of "cutting and healing" is looking in a similar direction when s/he writes about uncomfortable change.
Isaiah puts the costs in a visible, painful scenario to bring home the point that change really ISN'T easy, and darn it, making that change will leave a mark.
1. B. Yes, we are changed--and that change may scar and serve as a reminder of who we were. For example, I can think of how my selfishness damaged several friendships. Relationships can be hard to repair, much like our health.
What I want to add two other general operating assumptions with change. The first is that we know what we desire and we can imagine what it means to have this desire met. In this first case, change is something we want to happen and we know in fair approximation of how much better we will feel when this change is fulfilled. The second is that in our scientific era, we want and expect that we can AND SHOULD anticipate the results of our efforts, thus finding the most "effective" methods of change. In both of these assumptions--which I think are just fine to have--are that we 1. know what we want and 2. know how to get it.
A completely other kind of change that is harder to want is change that we CANNOT imagine the result of. This, I think, is what people say when it is in "God's hand" and how they experience a lightness of being in that understanding.
Now, I am not one generally who gets a lot out of crediting God or asking that it be placed in his hand. Not because it doesn't give humans freedom, but perhaps because it doesn't account for the fullest range of possibility. In taking the example from "cutting and healing," there is a desire for change but something that isn't making this possible. We say it is a lack of will, but I don't think that by naming it as a weakness of choice, we are any closer to changing the behavior. Such scenarios of change put us at odds between our desire to be just who we are and some very-good-but-bossy-part-of-us who wants us to be different. We want something to be different but we don't know exactly what to hold on to or to let go of, fearful of letting go of the "wrong" thing or of changing the part that is the good stuff. This is, I believe, in part the problem of the metaphor of surgery for healing: it sounds too human, too knowledgable.
1. C. A kind of change that is harder to want is change that we cannot imagine THE RESULT OF and we cannot ascribe A CAUSE TO.
The issue of cutting out or burning out a part of us in order to heal can work if there is a powerful, compassionate God ready at hand to mold us. But I just don't know if that God is so easily accessible or if we really know how to surrender our will/desire. This is (again) for two reasons: One, God's Plan has been overdetermined for too long and while I respect that invoking God as the source of transformation lends authority and mystery to that transformation, I think we secretly *think* we know what God wants because we have been told in church/society so much that it is hard to not try to control the future. Second, while "letting go and letting God" lifts it from human calculation and causation, it also prescribes a series of actions that one is to take to ensure the divineness of this change, i.e. prayer, church attendance, correct amounts of action and release, etc. It tends to get complicated of what it means to REALLY hand it over to "God" and we find ourselves second-guessing this choice when it isn't moving fast enough or when suspect or are told that we aren't relinquishing enough control. We get tangled in what we are supposed to do while God is In Charge.
To want change what we can't control is to act faithfully with the tools we have and not anticipate that we know what we will feel like when we have been transformed: only that we will be in a different place and that it may still hurt, it won't be * this* hurt any longer. And this will be a relief. One can start to get rather picky about what "faithfully" means, or which faith you need to abide by (which I will discuss in part 2 of my Isaiah Treatise) but what does faithfully mean TO YOU? This means finding something that works, something you trust that brings you joy/comfort, and doing it with regularity. Do it faithfully. Be mindful of what changes in your life just by doing one thing with great care and diligence. See if you feel differently after a couple of weeks. And then note 'what is different?" Be willing to change or continue, but always choosing something that you trust/know that brings you comfort or joy. Something really satisfying.
This has been a long post, and I have more to say about the historical situation of the People of Israel and why they --and we even--might buy into a tough love God, but I have another story about how healing happens, told to me this week under different circumstances but I think it applies.
An old man appeared to the long houses of several clans of the Iroquois nation. He was a sick and elderly man, and he went to each longhouse asking for shelter and food. The wolf clan, the turtle clan, the eel clan; the heron, the snipe, and the beaver clan--each of these longhouses refused him, saying that he could not receive the care he was looking for with them and they had no time to care for an elderly man. Bu the man kept up his search and came to the longhouse of the bear clan. Here, he was welcome and he took up a bed in the corner of the longhouse. He soon started to ask for herbs from his bed, saying that if he had a particular plant, perhaps it would heal him. And so people of the longhouse went and gathered this herb and that, bringing it back to him. He would then, in the company of others, prepare the herb and treat himself. And his health would improve. With each ailment, the man would request another herb, and would be slowly and steadly healed. One day, the members of the longhouse came and found a young and healthy man standing the doorway, casting a great shadow into the longhouse. The immediately recognized him as the Creator. He said to them: "I am the elderly man whom you welcomed. Because of your patience in caring for me, you have learned about the many ways the earth provides for healing. Because you possess this wisdom now, you will be the healers of the nation."
Even here, the people come to know the source, cause and result of healing. But in the midst of it, they didn't know. They just lived faithfully.
If I have been unclear or confusing, please respond and let me know what might help. I'm curious about how to generalize and psychologize the scriptural text for people outside of the tradition without ignoring what makes the tradition profound and puts so much at stake in it for those who are invested personally and those who are personally and culturally affected.