FROM THE BOUNDARY
I suppose we’re all more-or-less familiar with the biblical story of the burning bush recounted in Exodus 3 and 4 – how God (‘I Am’) spoke to Moses from a bush on Mount Horeb which burned but was not consumed.
It’s a pretty detailed conversation about how Moses would lead the children of Israel from Egypt to Canaan, the land of milk and honey, and contains various supernatural ‘signs’ to persuade Moses that he really is the man for the job, able, eloquently enough, to convince everyone that he’s acting by divine command.
Various theories have been offered to explain the ‘burning bush’ phenomenon, for example that the bush was in fact a plant capable of secreting a substance which could ignite without destroying it; or, again, that Moses simply went to investigate a fire on Horeb; or, yet again, that the Hebrew word for ‘bush’ was mistakenly used in the burning bush passage though in fact it referred to Mount Sinai which Exod. 19:18 refers to as a mountain of smoke to which God had descended “in fire”.
What of the conversation itself, the idea, that is, that God ‘spoke’ to Moses, and that He ‘spoke’ to some other select souls in a language readily understood? Well, St Joan’s ‘voices from God’ (in particular St Michael) seemingly spoke French, and the Martos children seemingly heard ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ in Portuguese – so who knows? However far it all stretches credulity, does it really matter?
The important thing, the bottom line, is that, in one way or other, God ‘speaks’ to us. That’s the ‘truth’ we must carry with us.
I don’t find it hard to believe that with the burning bush Moses experienced something so unexpected, so inexplicable, so wonder-ful, so inspirational that he concluded it was the song of the divine which he heard, and which, unravelled and meditated upon, pointed the path to Egypt. And since I don’t believe for a moment that God has ever stopped ‘speaking’ to us, the windows of our lives must ever remain open to hear Him – or, rather, ‘Her’.
The ancients were great story-tellers. Just as Jesus in the parables, they often conveyed meaning anecdotally with all sorts of literary devices. And if they did anthropomorphise God, make Him in our image, and then put Him somewhere ‘up there’ unless He happened to come ‘down here’, they did no more than we’re still apt to do. So actually, the joke’s on us. If we label the stories as literal truth, and so miss their ‘truth-value’, we’re apt to shackle ourselves to untruth; and if we then start shouting and screaming that the man who won’t swallow the untruth must be some kind of heretic, for whom cruel and unusual punishments are his just deserts, we make ourselves even smaller than we were in swallowing the untruth in the first place. Oh dear – how messy religion can become! And, sad to say, in many ways it’s been the history of the Christian Church. God help you if you suggest the earth orbits the sun!
But yes, of course God ‘speaks’ to us – and with us and through us. How could it be otherwise? Doesn’t He gather even the remnant to Him, those whom the pastors have rejected and driven away? Isn’t He a God near at hand? Doesn’t He fill both heaven and earth? Aren’t we the flowers he nurtures in His garden? Isn’t the whole of creation the love of the Eternal Lover? Isn’t He the breath of our breath, the mind of our mind, the eye of our eye, the infinite in the finite? Isn’t He there in those rays of sunlight feeding the earth, in that water which cleanses us? Isn’t He there when our life has made the life of someone else easier, in every act of love, of compassion, of generosity, of forgiveness? Isn’t He our every righteousness? So yes, of course He speaks to us, and with us, and through us. In all aliveness He speaks to us.
“In all aliveness”. Do you remember the story of St Francis and the almond tree? To the tree he said “Speak to me of God!” – and forthwith the tree blossomed in all its aliveness, as if the Holy Spirit had breathed through it, as, in the creation myth, God breathed through the nostrils of lifeless man formed from the earth. We’re all touched by that same Spirit, that She, that great Mother Bird tending her young, that living reality in all our lives no matter whether we’re Christian or anything else. She blows where She wills. So we’d better be ready for Her.
The poet, Walt Whitman, gives expression to some of this in his masterpiece ‘Leaves of Grass’. Find God, he says, “in the faces of men and women” and in your own face in a mirror. “I see something of God in each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment…” And then the key for burning bushes: “I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed…” Maybe we should think on that as we tramp the byways of Bridgetown this week.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Shock waves from the boundary: “Make your own Bible.” Become “a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)