A quick update
To my amazement, I'm still here, and have even caught up with myself to the extent that I've just started Numbers. Not really sure why I'm staying with this, as thus far nothing much is happening beyond my feeling vaguely guilty if I've not read the day's chunk by bedtime (and vague guilt for those things I ought to have done is so much an essential feature of life as Kathryn that this nothing new). Some things have made me really really angry...specifically the unequal strictures of the Law with regard to women...some things have made me sad...and some, to be honest, have left me cold.Having had some thought provoking CME on Sunday, considering "Does God Suffer?" (which I've blogged here) I've been considering whether I have tended to disregard the awesome nature of God in favour of a God whom I have made so accessible that he has become domesticated, almost cosy, a God made in my image...
No such danger for the children of Israel. All those multitudinous rules that ensure that God is kept in his proper place are at one level a huge turn-off for me...I want to feel I can fling myself into my Father's arms and cry or rage when I need to. But I need to grasp, too, what it means to stand in any sort of relationship to the Creator, who is absolute unchanging Love. On a day when my own failings and inadequacies feel particularly pressing, that should be a "woe is me" experience...for the brighter the light, the more one recognises those parts which remain in darkness. Awe and a holy fear are the most proper response, and the role of those endless restrictions is to create the framework which has that awe built in to every approach to God, the I AM.
So, perhaps more is going on through this process than is evident above the surface.
I'm happy to sit with that, and see where I end up.
3 Comments:
Re the "process"; I'm finding that I get more out of the readings a couple of days after reading them; as if they need some time to percolate in my consciousness.
The other day it struck me how much I like the Joseph story -- more than any of the other OT stories. It's a narrative with a fairly contemporary sensibility -- not a lot of supernatural bling-bling (which, frankly, I find off-putting); here God is what theologians call Deus absconditus, the hidden God, working behind the scenes for the most part.
And -- Exodus is not one of my favorite books, for some of the reasons others have mentioned, but one of the strangely endearing parts of it to me is Moses' easy relationship with God, which seems to be in such striking contrast to God's presence in this book in general, smiting people left and right, warning them about not even touching the mountain where God is about to make Godsself known. (And even Moses has a close call with the Almighty early on.) I love the way Moses kvetches to God about the people, about his own inadequacies, etc. Whenever I find these seemingly contradictory viewpoints in one book, I ask, "When these were being put together, the editors had ample opportunity to take out or gloss over the problematic passages; but they didn't. They left them side by side. Why?
Ditto to the percolating process.
glad you are still here.
:)
wherever here is that is.
I'm in Tallinn right now. (grin) and yes about to read today.
got a rare hour on the pc -nice to catch up a bit
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