The First of Advent, Isaiah 1:1-9
Today is the start of the period of Advent. I try to read passages from the old Roman Breviary during this period. It is a prayer book for each day, a very old one, from the Middle Ages. It consists of rituals, prayers of course and passages from the Bible. There are several volumes. I use the Winter volume which starts at Advent. It reads Isaiah during Advent.
So, I will be reading Isaiah for weeks and weeks, and I really do not know if I keep this up, I do not have much time, and more important, Isaiah is quite an angry prophet. To be confronted with that every day is quite something. I cannot actually believe I am really going to do this.
Today I have read Isaiah 1-1:9. In this passage Isaiah gives a message to the people of Israel; he tells them a vision which he received from God. We should say probably that he tells what he has seen with his inner eye. He tells that people have turned away from God, and what had happened then: “Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a besieged city. Unless Yahweh of Armies had left to us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom; we would have been like Gomorrah.”
What moved me is the passage about the daughter of Zion, the woman who is left “like a hut in a field of melons”. With this daughter Jerusalem is meant, but she seen as woman living alone between ruins. I see her walking, I see her as the woman on five of Pentacles, hurrying forwards, not looking up, being cold and hungry. This is the remnant that is over, implicates Isaiah, and which is the hope for the future. The Breviary interrupts here with a response about Maria, for Advent starts now and it sees Maria, the mother of Christ, as the hope for the future.
My question to the tarot today was: “Who is this daughter of Zion, who lives in the midst of the ruins?” I pulled my card form the Tarot of a Moon Garden and I received the Moon: a waxing moon with tears in her eyes, crying over what happens. Another part of her is dark. She is fearful, big childlike eyes are looking at us questioning: “What have you made of your lives, what have you made of your world? What will become of you?”
So, I will be reading Isaiah for weeks and weeks, and I really do not know if I keep this up, I do not have much time, and more important, Isaiah is quite an angry prophet. To be confronted with that every day is quite something. I cannot actually believe I am really going to do this.
Today I have read Isaiah 1-1:9. In this passage Isaiah gives a message to the people of Israel; he tells them a vision which he received from God. We should say probably that he tells what he has seen with his inner eye. He tells that people have turned away from God, and what had happened then: “Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a besieged city. Unless Yahweh of Armies had left to us a very small remnant, we would have been as Sodom; we would have been like Gomorrah.”
What moved me is the passage about the daughter of Zion, the woman who is left “like a hut in a field of melons”. With this daughter Jerusalem is meant, but she seen as woman living alone between ruins. I see her walking, I see her as the woman on five of Pentacles, hurrying forwards, not looking up, being cold and hungry. This is the remnant that is over, implicates Isaiah, and which is the hope for the future. The Breviary interrupts here with a response about Maria, for Advent starts now and it sees Maria, the mother of Christ, as the hope for the future.
My question to the tarot today was: “Who is this daughter of Zion, who lives in the midst of the ruins?” I pulled my card form the Tarot of a Moon Garden and I received the Moon: a waxing moon with tears in her eyes, crying over what happens. Another part of her is dark. She is fearful, big childlike eyes are looking at us questioning: “What have you made of your lives, what have you made of your world? What will become of you?”