The Earth is the Lord's
Our age is brilliant with electric light. No further description is needed of this as we see it re-invent itself with each passing day. But what of the inner life? If we measure culture by the quality and quantity of its books, by the number of its universities, by our artistic accomplishment or our scientific discoveries, the Western civilization is a golden age. But what if we use a different criteria, "namely, how much spiritual substance there is in everyday existence.""The patter of life of a people is more significant than the pattern of art. What counts most is not expression, but existence itself. The key source of creativity lies in the will to cling to spirituality, to be close to the inexpressible, and not merely in the ability of expression." The God of the scriptures is always more concerned with our daily pattern of life than our abilities of any sort. More than that, the sense of transcendence, what Heschel calls staying "close to the inexpressible" seems necessary lest our abilities blunt and darken.
What he is hinting at in the introduction, as he prepares to introduce us to the inner world of the Jew in East Europe, is what I have been working on in my own life for the last 10 years. Whatever talent I may have as a writer or thinker or creator, my life's work will be my life and all the living beings connected to it. Any slender volume of print will only be lasting in God's eyes depending on the lived life that shapes the turning and twisting of my pen. Words empty of experience do not count before one who sees into the heart of men and women. What is important as we try and take stock of our own lives or of Western culture in general is the history of our soul.
I have been very interested in this word lately: the soul. The soul is a word that captures everything within a living person: his body, his relationships, his heart and mind, his place in the world. It is a word for everything about him. It is that word that drove me to read this essay by Abraham Heschel. I plan to comment on much of what he said, so I guess this is a multi-part blog entry. If you are looking for something to title this, it would go something like: What we can all learn from Abraham Heschel and his people.
Abraham Heschel was saved out of Nazi Germany with other Jews who had published great works of scholarship. He was brought to America where he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr, living in a neighborhood with Neiber, and developed a long standing friendship with Father Neauhaus among other things. My friend Keith introduced me to Heschel when I was in college. He is a world of thought. One thing the Jewish people do far better than we Christians do is to remember. They remember and they study the collected memories and the tell their children the stories of the past. "The present moment overflowed its bounds. People lived not chronologically, but in fusion of past and present." The world is crammed with the living beings who have gone before and made a way for us to be here. There is much for us to learn.
Comments
And in regard to this:
"One thing the Jewish people do far better than we Christians do is to remember. They remember and they study the collected memories and the tell their children the stories of the past. "The present moment overflowed its bounds. People lived not chronologically, but in fusion of past and present." The world is crammed with the living beings who have gone before and made a way for us to be here. There is much for us to learn."
This is something that Orthodox Christians share with Jewish people. It's just one of several ways they are more Hebraic than we western Christians seem to be.
Looking forward to part two...
"One thing the Jewish people do far better than we Christians do is to remember. They remember and they study the collected memories and the tell their children the stories of the past. "The present moment overflowed its bounds. People lived not chronologically, but in fusion of past and present." The world is crammed with the living beings who have gone before and made a way for us to be here. There is much for us to learn."
I think of the relevance of eternity when reading this section. It is that we see a an association with Hebrew culture and their culture's realization of life lived out in eternity which is confounding to us in this culture. In other words, it's the purpose of eternity being lived out in the traditional Hebrew culture that we are missing in modern evangelical culture. God's people should no doubt have the imprint of their God in and on there lives. Cameron, you mention that Orthodox Christians share this with Jewish people, I think this is because there is a spiritual connection built into the Orthodox Christian culture and the matters of Eternity, a connection to Christ the Bride. I would go as far as saying that Anglicans and Catholics share similar roots (never mind they are opposite in other key doctrinal issues). What is troubling to me is that modern evangelical life has more ties with humanism and the temporal life than that of the eternal life, as J. point out this is through the lack of connection we have to "the living beings who have gone before and made a way for us to be here." Our (my) challenge lies in the reality that we can't lose focus in the eternal purpose's of God and that the history of humanity to this point has been apart of the eternal purpose of God. Humanistic history is not just man's design, (no offense to the Armenian view) but a purposeful and intentional plan by God to introduce us to eternity and to reveal His purpose for all the ages through His Son Christ Jesus. (Ironically by today's viewpoint this is what the Jewish culture prophesied in the OT and lived for up till Christ's first coming and those remaining in the Jewish tradition still wait with eternity in mind and for a Christ, yet Christ has already been revealed.) What we can live for and in now, which is not easy for our current culture, is God's eternal purpose for us to be the Bride of Christ. I'm learning that this purpose is not so much a myth of theology but a practical, intentional and purposeful lifestyle that all Christians are called too but few Christians adhere too.
Thanks J. for inspiring. I look forward to part 2 as well...