Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your
country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show
you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you,
and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… So
Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went
with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Genesis
12:1-4
Thus
begins a long journey for a man and for civilization. It is difficult to
comprehend that on orders from an unseen and often unheard spirit-voice in
time, in history, that a man would pack up his family and set out for an
unknown destination. All this at age 75 no less! And yet, because Abram and his
wife Sarai (later to be renamed Abraham and Sarah) departed from Haran, so much
that we take for granted in this world is here. We are here. We are here
contemplating, meditating on just what this story, this journey, might mean. As
creatures made imago Dei, in the image of God, we seek meaning.
This
journey eventually comes to represent what is meant by faith. Faith - a word
that is both revered by many and ridiculed by many. As if there is anyone who
does not live by faith.
Abram
and Sarai are living a comfortable suburban existence in Ur of the Chaldes,
when God says, “Children go where I send thee.” Remarkably, they do! Little
could they know they would reach a new homeland. Little did they know they
would have a child at ages 100 and 90! Little did they know their names would
become Abraham and Sarah. Little did they know that their journey would
eventually lead to a young man named Jesus carrying on the tradition of faith
as a journey with God. Little did they know that through Isaac and Ishmael they
would be the matriarch and patriarch of three “faiths”: Judaism, Christianity
and Islam.
This
is where it all begins. The very notion that the life of faith is a journey,
directed by God’s Spirit/Wind, taking us from we know not when and to take us
to we know not where, begins with Sarah and Abraham.
All
of which is why, as Frederick Beuchner reminds us in his little book, Wishful Thinking (Harper and Row,
NY:1973), “Faith is better understood as a verb than a noun, as a process than
as a possession. It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith
is not being sure of where you’re going but going anyway - a journey without
maps. Tillich said that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of
faith….doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
(p.25, p.20)
Faith
is a verb, a process, not a possession. Despite years, decades, centuries of
assertions, one cannot “have” faith. This is where we go wrong. We live by
faith. All of us. It is the essence of what it means to be alive. We are all
traveling on a journey from where we came from to where we are going. Whether
or not you understand that starting point to be God or a Big Bang, it turns out
that in at least one respect the Bible is right: we are dust and we return to
dust. We are fundamentally animated, reorganized, photosynthesized dust. This
realization ought to bring us to some sense of humility – grounded, of the
earth, as the word humility derives by
turns its meaning from the Latin humus, or earth.
Gustave
Mahler sought to “create a world” in each of his symphonies. I have been
listening to his third symphony for several years during Lent. It has been a
journey, a process, an on-again-off-again affair. One might say that I have had
faith that one day I might understand it, or get it. It is a massive work – six
movements, two of which are as long as some complete symphonies! When one sets
out to listen to the Mahler 3, one, like Sarai and Abram, commits to a journey.
One accepts that it is going to take time, and that you do not really know
where you are going to end up.
Life
is like that. Science is like that. Faith is like that. Whether our faith is in
God, Science or that we have no faith, we are all traveling together on a
journey of which the end-point is uncertain. Now that theoretical and
astrophysicists have determined that fully 95% of the universe (universes?) are
currently undetectable by human senses many have become aware that the long
perceived differences between faith and science have been erased. The
objectivism of Ayn Rand which is built upon the foundation of sensory
perception collapses as the mysteries of the universe stretch out before us on
a journey that seeks to comprehend where we come from and where we are going.
It is really quite simple. We are dust and to dust we shall return.
Mahler
leads us on this same journey not so much with words, though he does
incorporate words into his music, but rather with the mystery of vibrations.
Music is sound, a series of vibrations organized in ways that speak to our
inner selves in ways that we may never “understand” but nevertheless ways that
“speak” to us of the essence of what it means to be alive. Music demands a kind
of humility for it is composed of basic elements and properties of the same
kind that lead the mostly hidden universe to continue to expand – that is, the
universe of scientific inquiry is itself on a journey – or at least we take our
understanding of this remarkable discovery on faith.
Mahler
himself seems to have been uncertain just what his symphony was “about” – as if
it must have an inherent meaning. He wrote and re-wrote descriptions like, “The
first movement is in two parts: Pan awakens and Summer marches in.” Later he
changed that to, “What the stony mountains tell me and Summer marches in.” He
once called it A Midsummer’s Day Dream, and then declared that the best overall
title might be “Pan” since that one word has two meanings: the name of a Greek
god, and in Greek it means “all.” All those arranged vibrations seeking to open
up to the listener the content and meaning of “all.” He discarded all such
descriptions when he published the symphony.
While
listening to the Mahler 3 this past week I read poems by Wendell Berry from a
collection titled Leavings
(Counterpoint, Berkeley: 2010). From one of his Sabbath Poems 2007, no. VI :
Listen privately, silently, to the
voices that rise up
from the pages of books and from your
own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that
belong
to the streambanks and the trees and the
open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong
to this place,
by which it speaks for itself and no
other.
Found your hope, then, on the ground
under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the
ground
underfoot. Be lighted by the light that
falls
freely upon it after the darkness of
nights
and the darkness of our ignorance and
madness.
Let it also be lighted by the light that
is within you,
which is the light of imagination. By it
you see
you see the likeness of other people in
other places to yourself
in your place. It lights invariably the
need for care
toward other people, other creatures, in
other places
as you would ask them for care toward
your place and you.
In
a very real sense, the music of Mahler, the words of Berry, the theories of
science, the way of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all begin with a 75
year-old man and his wife leaving on a journey by faith, of faith, initiated by
a voice from without that speaks to the person within. The voice itself an
organized series of vibrations emanating from primal light, eventuating in
primal dust, dust that can detect and interpret those vibrations to somehow
make sense of where we are, who we are, and why we are here. Invariably it must
instill a sense of humility. When that humility is lost is when tragedy begins,
not only for those other people in other places who are like ourselves, but to
the very fabric of the earth itself, and all that is therein. Pan. All. The
rest is silence. Listen privately, silently, to the voices that rise up…
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