Let me have a few days to think it over.”
Sorrowfully, although he was not surprised
to have it happen again,
the angel returned to heaven.
Who could not understand such hesitation in a young woman—fear of the whole wild thing being misunderstood, fear that she would be considered an adulteress (for any woman taken in adultery was stoned to death)?
God will never force us. If we are to be co-creators with el, we must be co-creators willingly. Or maybe that’s wrong. Unlike Mary, not all the prophets were immediately willing. They were often like the younger son who said, “I won’t” but ended up doing what God had asked. Even if they had to spend three days in the belly of a great fish before they thought better of the Lord’s request and went off grudgingly to preach repentance—whether they, personally, wanted the people to repent and be saved, or not.
So perhaps we need not be immediately willing. We can argue and protest that it’s too difficult, that we aren’t up to it, that we deserve a little rest for a change, that dying by stoning is a nasty way to die. And then we can say, still a bit grudgingly, “Here I am. Send me. Be it unto me according to your word.” And then we will be given the strength to do whatever it is that God wants us to do, to bear whatever it is that God wants us to bear. If God wants us to bear figs out of season, el, the Creator, will give us the ability to do so.
Long before I read Wiesel’s words, I had been thinking a good deal about the ram, as well as the human characters I was reading and thinking about. To help me think, I have, throughout the years, written poems in the voices of some of the characters in the stories in Scripture, in order to understand better what they have to say to me, that I may move from reading to thinking to prayer.
Here is one from the point of view of the ram.
CAUGHT IN THE BUSH
Asked to leave Eden
where I, with all the other beasts,
remained after the two human creatures left,
I moved to the gates.
The cherub with the flaming sword
drew aside to let me by,
folding his wings across his eyes.
I trotted along a path which led through the woods,
across a desert, made a long detour
around a lake, and finally climbed a mountain
till trees gave way to bushes
and a rock.
An old man raised a knife.
He stood there by the rock
and wept and raised his knife.
So these are men, I thought,
and shook my head in horror, and was caught
within the springing branches of a bush.
Then there was lightning, and the thunder came,
and a voice cried out to me: My son, my son,
slain before the foundation of the world.
And then I felt the knife.
For this I came from Eden;
my will is ever his,
as I am his, and have my life
in him, and he in me.
Thus the knife pierced his own heart,
in piercing mine,
and the old man laughed for joy.
If God created everything, and saw that it was good, then we have much to learn from all that good, from the ram, from the robins who had the courage and the hope to build their nest outdoors in the trees this spring, to my old Irish setter, needing to be close either to the other dogs or to one of us, needing the assurance of touch. The other animals, instead of shunning him as old age leads him toward death, provide him with their own equivalent of handholding: Titus, the amber cat, continues his old job of cleaning Timothy’s ears, putting one paw firmly on the old setter’s head as he cleans and licks, as though the big beast were the size of a kitten. Tiye, the Ibezan hound puppy, a beautiful, galloping reproduction of the temple dogs in Egyptian friezes, licks the old dog’s watery eyes. And this concern is part of the good which we human beings have lost, and are at last beginning to recognize that we have lost; and so there is hope that it may once again be recovered.
The telephone call that I have been waiting for, these last several weeks, has come at last. But before it came, my friend and I said our good-byes, and somehow the telephone was not between us. In the truest sense of the word we kythed, and I was able to tell her of the dream I had of her and our ninety-three-year-old friend, the two of them dancing together in a field of daisies, dancing in the joy that is part of the dance of all creation.
“Oh, how beautiful, how beautiful,” she said.
And we kythed our love and hope.
And at the same time I was cooking and cleaning and preparing for a houseparty to celebrate the double fiftieth birthday of two of our friends, with the attic once more turned into a dormitory, and the kitchen smelling of homemade pasta. And it is all part of the mighty act of creation and it is good.
We can recognize the holy good even while we are achingly, fearfully aware of all that has been done to it through greed and lust for power and blind stupidity. We forget the original good of all creation because of our own destructiveness. The ugly fact that evil can be willed for people by other people, and that the evil comes to pass, does not take away our capacity to will good. There may be many spirits abroad other than the Holy Spirit (the Gospels warn us of them), but they do not make the Holy Spirit less holy. Our paradoxes and contradictions expand; our openness to God’s revelations to us must also be capable of expansion. Our religion must always be subject to change without notice—our religion, not our faith, but the patterns in which we understand and express our faith. Surely we would feel ill at ease today with people who had family morning prayers and Scripture readings daily, and yet kept slaves?
Our perception of faith in our Creator is of necessity different from Abraham’s and Sarah’s perception—neither better nor worse, but different. But since all, all, is part of God, then the differences are part of el, too, for el is All in all, and is loving us tenderly in order to redeem all that was made in the beginning, so that it may once again be called very good.
And I am convinced that not only is our planet ultimately to be freed from bondage to Satan, but with it the whole universe—all the singing, dancing suns and stars and galaxies—will one day join unhindered in the great and joyous festival. The glorious triumph of Easter will encompass the whole of God’s handiwork. The praise for the primal goodness of God’s creation in the beginning will be rounded out with the final worship, as John has expressed it in the Revelation:
“Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created.” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever. Amen!”
—
I look at the colours of autumn moving across the land, and even now creation is ablaze with glory. The oak trees are touched with purply-bronze. The maples flame scarlet and gold. We are harvesting vegetables from the garden, grateful that an early frost has not touched the delicate green peppers, the sweet corn, the tomatoes; or the zinnias and marigolds which border the garden and protect it from Japanese beetles. We have startled an enterprising rabbit sitting in the middle of the greenery, eating lettuce and green beans, bold as brass as long as the dogs are indoors.
Sometimes at dusk we see the loveliness of a doe and her fawn walking across the field, but they have stayed away from the garden, chewing instead the bark of tender new trees.
Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, don’t mind the cold. We’ll be picking them long after the ground is rimed with frost. We have discovered a new vegetable this summer, spaghetti squash, which we scrape out with a fork, after cooking, in long, spaghetti-like strands. Leeks are a delight, creamed, or in soup, and spinach salad. We glory in the goodness of creation every day. All that weed-pulling
was worth it, though weeds have their own beauty, and, like mosquitoes and flies, are an inevitable part of the summer.
At night now the sky is clear, with no heat haze. One night we eat supper out on the little terrace which we have made with flagstones and lots of honest sweat. We linger at the picnic table through sunset and star rise, and suddenly someone says, “How light it is on the northern horizon!” We blow out the lamps and there is the staggering beauty of the Northern Lights. There is something primal about those lights pulsing, in pale green and rose, upwards from the horizon. They give me the same surge of joy as the unpolluted horizon near the Strait of Magellan, showing the curve of the home planet; the same lifting of the heart as the exuberance of the dolphins sporting about the ship after we had crossed the equator.
I sit at the table as we all watch the awesome display of beauty, and there again is the promise of the rainbow covenant which God placed in the sky; and there, too, is the fulfilled new covenant of Easter, radiant, affirming.
And it is good.
In those northern lights, in the great river of the Milky Way, in the circle of family and friends around the table, and in the meal we have just finished and which came largely from the garden, I see God, and the joy we have jointly with him in creation.
In his first letter, John writes,
My dear people, we are already the children of God, but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is.
Not only do all our human hopes and dreams look forward to that time of reunion with God. Paul, writing to the Romans, tells us that
The whole creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay, and obtain the glorious liberty of God’s children….We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now.
In writing to the people of Colossae, Paul goes even further in his hope for the future:
For in Christ all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile himself to all things, whether on earth or in heaven.
We, on our small planet, can either help with this cosmic reconciliation, or we can hinder it. Hardness of heart hinders the coming of the kingdom. Smugness, pride, self-absorption, hinders it. “You are a stiff-necked people,” God chided the children of Israel, and we are still a stiff-necked people and that, too, hinders the coming of the kingdom.
But if I believe that God is not going to fail with me, I must also believe, with Paul and John, that el is not going to fail with anybody, or Satan has won. El will not fail with the gypsy moth caterpillar nor the encephalitis mosquito nor the rapist nor the warmonger nor any part of all that el has made for his own delight—and ours, too. El will not fail, otherwise el is allowing Satan to keep this planet forever. I do not believe that this can happen, for we are God’s, and it is el who has made us and not we ourselves.
And as long as I have even a small splinter of unlovingness lodged in my heart, how can I look down on or judge anybody else? Jesus says that I must not. I know that I cannot throw the first stone, and I hope that, no matter how many sinful prodigal sons are invited, I will still want to go to the party.
If I believe in the loving Abba to whom Jesus prayed, then I must also believe that this loving father is not going to fail with creation, that the glorious triumph of Easter will ultimately be extended to the entire universe.
Namasté
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters.
And God saw that it was good. It was very good.
At sea, on the S. S. Santa Mariana, 1981,
to Crosswicks, autumn, 1982
Chapter 1: Beginnings
1. L’Engle opens the chapter talking about a storm she and her husband experienced while aboard a freighter. To find comfort, she turned to the “great story of the Beginning.” She says, “One is very aware of time in the middle of a storm.” Have you experienced a storm, either literally or metaphorically? To what did you turn for comfort? Were you more aware of time during this storm? How?
2. Do you agree that we often “forget that we are surrounded by the creative power of Love”? How does Love create in your life? What do you do to feel more connected to the Source of Love?
3. L’Engle discusses the trinitarian God throughout this chapter, focusing especially on the King James translation that says “our image” instead of “my image,” as found in other translations. What is the difference in this language? Why is it important? Does the language in the King James version challenge your idea of God in any way?
4. Do you believe community is important in the Christian faith? How do you engage in community? How is community challenging? Consider this quote: “A single drop can’t make even a puddle, but together, all our little drops and God’s planning can make not only a mighty ocean but a mighty difference.” Discuss this. What does it mean to you? Have you seen this idea in action?
5. L’Engle says that “planting onions…was an act of faith in the future” during a time when the world was threatened by nuclear war. How do we act in faith for the future? Does fear immobilize us? In what way can you act in faith for the future?
6. Throughout the book, the author refers to God as “el” instead of “he” or “she.” How does her use of the Hebrew here change or enhance your reading? Do you agree with L’Engle when she says that “we are continuing to worry about sexist words to the point where we are coming close to destroying language”? Do you believe it is damaging or sexist to refer to God as only “he” or “she”? Why or why not?
7. Do you think arguing over matters of faith or science, specifically in terms of creation versus evolution, “allows some people to stop thinking,” as the author claims? In what ways do faith and science intersect? Do you have to choose between one or the other?
Chapter 2: Calling God Abba, Daddy
1. “There are so many preconceptions encrusting our idea of the Father to whom Jesus turned in prayer, in joy, in anguish.” To what preconceptions do you think the author is referring? Is the word “daddy” in regards to God a difficult one for you? Why? How does your own experience with a father figure affect your view of God? Do your preconceptions “encrust” the image of God?
2. In examining the ministry of Jesus, L’Engle points out that “there had to come a time of recognition of his vocation” and that “a vocation must be tested.” What do you think she means? Do you believe you recognize your own vocation? Has your vocation been tested? How?
3. The author notes that sometimes we are “deluded into thinking that what we are doing is for the best.” Have you ever fallen into temptation in this manner? How did you come to recognize your error?
4. “Knowledge is always open to change; knowledge, not wisdom. If it is not open to change it is not knowledge, it is prejudice.” Do you agree? Think of an example of a time when your knowledge of God was challenged. Did you change your mind? Why or why not? What are some examples of prejudice parading as knowledge that you see?
5. Throughout the book, L’Engle repeats a phrase which came to her suddenly one day, and which she believed was a profound revelation: “My religion is subject to change without notice.” What does this mean to you? Does this statement make you uncomfortable? Why? Does it feel like a profound revelation? Why or why not?
6. “Faith and religion are not the same thing.” Has there ever been a time in your life when you were more religious than faithful? What is the difference?
7. The author claims that she has faith “because I have met faith, I have seen it in action.” Is this true for you, too? When have you seen faith in action? What has made the deepest impression on your faith? Have you ever seen faith in action which is not Christian faith, neces
sarily, but is still a powerful influence in your life? When?
Chapter 3: Protecting God
1. What does it mean to try to protect God? Chapter 3 opens by claiming we humans often try to protect him. Have you ever done this? L’Engle says, “When we try to protect God, all we do is stop our understanding of God from growing and deepening.” Do you agree? Why or why not?
2. This chapter asserts the importance of openness in our faith. L’Engle says, “We cannot have this openness unless our faith in God as Lord of all is bedrock under our feet.” Why is it important that our faith be built solidly on the bedrock of the idea of God as Lord? Have you ever witnessed a Christian turn away from God after struggling with questions?
3. The author says, “Faith is beyond literal definition.” Here, we are reminded that faith is a gift. How, then, does your faith grow? What moments in your life have increased your faith? What has challenged it?
4. On what do you focus in your faith? L’Engle says that “we tend to find what we look for.” What does she mean by this? Do you agree with her? How can we shift our focus from the dirt to the beauty? How do you think a shift in focus could change us?
5. Again, the author examines the importance of community when she says, “Before I can be an icon of the image of God, I must be with someone else, hand in hand.” What do you think she means by this?
6. L’Engle says, “We are most free when we are most willing to acknowledge our interdependence.” What is the difference between being “free” and being “independent”? Which do you think is more valued in today’s society?
7. Is there a clear line between what is sacred and what is secular to you? Are you ever surprised by finding the sacred in the secular?
Chapter 4: The Light in the Darkness
1. Our choices—big and small—shape us. L’Engle affirms the importance of making choices, saying that “if we make no choices, we lose our creativity, we lose touch with real life, we lose more of the image of God, we abdicate our own human nature.” How have your choices shaped you, for better or worse? Have you ever not made a choice? Were there consequences for not choosing? Do you agree with the author that by making no choices, we lose?
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