Like sparring suitors, the north wind and the spring sun are vying for the affections of the sap season. This sap season, a hesitant and seemingly shy lover, is wooed from hiding by the warmth of that sun for a few brief hours each day in the late afternoon before retreating back into the freezing cold embrace of the wind. Each spring, we bear witness to this love affair and its weather related variables. Each spring we benefit from its sweet fruit.
These early spring days find me closing in on the finish line of my reading of the Biblical text in its entirety. This last while, it has felt like the last gruelling kilometers in a marathon. You know you’re close to the finish line and all you have to do is keep putting one weary foot in front of the other. Once the finish line, the goal is actually in sight, you just want to be there.
One of the most perplexing aspects of the text for me has been the depiction of God as fickle, harsh, and even needy. God comes across as an Old Testament idol on steroids. This God is the one that trumps all other gods. At face value, this God too seems to need to be placated through rule-keeping and sacrifices. A part of me wants to close the text and walk away. But then I get a glimpse, a glimmer of something in my periphery that suggests that what I see is only a dust-filled beam of light coming from a place that might be too bright for me to see up close or directly.
“God is only our name for it and the closer we get to it the more it ceases to be God.” ~ Meister Eckhart (as translated by John O’Donohue).
Could I be so focussed on trying to see and know a dust-filled beam of light that I might be missing the greatness of the sun? Could the glimpses I get be little wooings to stay present and look beyond what appears at face value? If so, why the coyness?
I also saw glimpses of God as a pleading lover. Like the spring sun, this lover God woos with a certain warmth, seeming to want some kind of connection with humanity. And there is no shortage of humanity in the text! Ordinary, run-of-the-mill, flawed women and men going about the everyday tasks and joys of living being invited, drawn into a greater story. Sarah and Abraham, Moses’ parents and sister, Hannah, Ruth, David, Esther, Namaan’s servant girl, Amos, and Jonah. It’s an endless list of regular people, not unlike me or you, who looked and saw beyond the dust-filled beam of light. This lover God seems to want to err on the side of generosity (much to the consternation of the likes of Jonah).
The poetry books of the Bible are rich. Psalms with its raw questionings, Proverbs with its practical wisdom, Song of Songs with its eroticism, and my favourite, Ecclesiastes, with its philosophical ponderings. A portion of it made me laugh aloud. My husband and I were commenting recently that we are young old people (and conversely, old young people) and this quote from the writer of Ecclesiastes says it most poetically –
“Don’t let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and no longer enjoy living. It will be too late then to remember him, when the light of the sun and moon and stars is dim to your old eyes, and there is no silver lining left among the clouds. Your limbs will tremble with age, and your strong legs will grow weak. Your teeth will be too few to do their work, and you will be blind, too. And when your teeth are gone, keep your lips tightly closed when you eat! Even the chirping of birds will wake you up. But you yourself will be deaf and tuneless, with a quavering voice. You will be afraid of heights and of falling, white-haired and withered, dragging along without any sexual desire. You will be standing at death’s door. And as you near your everlasting home, the mourners will walk along the streets. Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth and the spirit will return to God who gave it. “All is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “utterly meaningless.” ” (Ecclesiastes 12:1-8)
As I come to the end of my reading of the Bible in this way and the end of my musings about it in this space, I leave you with another approach to “reading” as suggested by Thomas Aquinas. He says, “Creation is the primary and most perfect revelation of the Divine.” The earth around us is slowly waking up after a winter’s rest, and it will soon be brimming with little bits of resurrection. As we watch and tend our little patches of green, might we coax from slumber a part of us that sees the Divine in the text of the unfolding, everyday spring miracle of the lilac bud and the robin’s egg? Soon the harsh cold winds will give way to warmer breezes. Might we feel in that the wooing of a Lover’s gaze?
