The Old Man Drawing the Water Out of the Rock

A Reflection and Poem for XVI Pentecost (Proper 21)   The Feast of St. Francis (Transferred) September 28, 2014     All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Exodus 17:1-7              Matthew 21:23-32

The Old Man Drawing the Water Out of the Rock

 The Old Man named Moses, whose name meant “Drawn out of the water” is leading the Elders of the Hebrew children to a place where he says there is water. The Elders are getting a bit steamed, not only because it is hot but they are also getting lot of heat from the people. They are not really fully out of water yet, but they are getting anxious, and they whine, fuss, moan, and complain. Moses, the Old Man, is getting tired of the job and is talking about heading back to Midian and leaving this group of malcontents to find their own way. However, this is just for show because the Old Man is lost himself. He doesn’t quite know where he is; all he knows is that God is with him, but he wishes that God would make it easier.

Suddenly the Old Man stops and listens, and after a moment he says, “God tells me to have you guys wait here while I go up to the rock yonder.” Moses is not all that sure he really heard that, but God seems to speak to him in dreams, and last night he dreamed of a rock that looked like that one. He walks to the rock and he wonders, “What am I to do now?”. 

He doesn’t know. “All right,” he thinks, “let me talk with the rock.” The rational part of him says “You are really losing it boy!” However he decides to ask the question that he asked the rock in the dream last night. He puts his hand on the part of the rock where there is an overhang which casts some shade, and he feels the rock. It is hard, solid, and old, made up of different layers and looks like a mixture of igneous and metaphoric rock. That would suggest that a volcano spilled the energy from the depth of the earth and that was partly covered with the sand of the wilderness and compressed by tons and centuries of pressure.  An earthquake at some point set it free.

The Old Man asked the rock, “Who are you?” 

The rock answered by singing: “I am a Rock - I am an i-i-i-i-island! And a rock feels no pain and an island never cries.”

“Where did that come from?” the old Man queried.

The Rock said, “I forgot you humans can only see time in a linear fashion, whereas I see it as a spiral. It is a song from two Jewish boys, Simon and Garfunkel, who I thought you knew since you were Jewish too. What do you want?

The Old Man said, “I need your help.”

The Rock said, “What - so you can use me, exploit me, cut me up and use me to decorate your kitchens and bodies or use me for one of your pyramids to celebrate yourself? I am happy just the way I am. As S and G will sing thousands of years from now:

I've built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It's laughter and it's loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Don't talk of love,
But I've heard the words before;
It's sleeping in my memory.
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

The Rock stopped singing and said, “I don’t owe you a thing.”

The Old Man said, “For an entity that wants to speak for herself, you are using a lot of another’s words. The question remains, ‘Who are you?’ Not the outer show you display, but who are you underneath that mask you are wearing?”

The Rock shot back, “Who cares? Just leave me alone in this God forsaken place.”

Moses said, “I can’t let you alone for I have my hand on you and I feel the pain in you that you deny. You and I are connected. When I had my encounter with God in another wilderness, the burning bush burned away my isolation, and I could again feel the pain of my people in my very soul. I can feel the longing of all creation to be united again - to enter into the continuing encounter with our true self, who we were created to be. You are a rock, and you were formed from the energy that was bursting when the Womb of God spoke and she brought forth all of creation. You and I share the same star dust of the light that shone in the darkness. God is not far away above the heavens but right here in the sacred space between us. I call on you to change the soul, the name, of this place from “God forsaken” to “God is with us”. Get over yourself, for it is not about you but the God that lives within you. When you share that divine nature, you become as God is - connected to all the suffering of the world of animal, plant, or mineral. It is one of the reasons that we humans pick up stones, to touch them and feel their deeper self in their hands. It is one of the reasons we humans plant trees which bear no fruit we can eat but which give beauty to the world we live in. It is one of the reasons we humans have pets, to learn and show compassion. It is one of the reasons we humans enter into community and relationships, for we are not meant to be alone in this world.”

 

The Old Man paused and waited.  He kept his hand on the rock and became aware of the rock’s longing. Moses said, “You have a spring of living water deep within you, from the core of your being. I ask you in the name of all that binds us together to open yourself up to share that water with my people. The water is a treasure given to you by God, not to be hoarded due to your private fear, but for you, as a steward of that gift, to share with God’s entire world. I have in my hand a staff that I used to part the Sea of Reeds; I will now touch it to your side so that you might be no longer apart but healed, so that you may give the treasure that is inside you. As you are healed, you have the ability to share yourself if you choose, only if you choose to be a channel of God’s peace.

And the water flowed and the people were healed of their thirst and fear, and they knew in their souls that the Rock was called “The LORD is with us”.

The Old Man Drawing the Water Out of the Rock (poem)

Knowing that God is with me

I am stopping and listening

Coming to talk to the Rock

Deciding on asking questions

I am stopping and listening

Touching the depth of being

Deciding on asking questions

Sharing the same star dust

Touching the depth of being

We are not meant to be alone

Sharing the same star dust

Having living water deep within

We are not meant to be alone

Coming to talk to the Rock

Having living water deep within

Knowing that God is with me

The Old Man Walking Through the Water

Video of this reflection is on : http://youtu.be/OrP1DZ_OgiE

A Reflection and Poem for XIV Pentecost (Proper 19)   All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC   September 14, 2014                                                           Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Exodus 14:19-31       Psalm 114        Romans 14:1-12           Matthew 18:21-35

The Old Man Walking Through the Water

The Old Man, whose name “Moses” meant “Pulling out of the water”, felt like he was really living into his name as he was walking through where the water used to be. The water was standing like a wall on either side of him, almost 50 feet high.  The ground underneath his feet was hard and solid; he thought it would be soft and sandy, as when the tide goes out, but this was like pavement. 

He was alarmed and wondered what would happen if Pharaoh’s army of chariots caught up to that long line of people following him who were carrying all of their possessions on their backs and in makeshift carts as they left Egypt. Pharaoh had lost face in the battle with the Old Man’s God, and while he had given permission for the Hebrews to leave, he had to reassert his authority and wring some sort of revenge on the former slaves. Pharaoh knew that many of the former slaves did not really want to leave, for it is human nature to want to stay in whatever condition you are rather than risk an unknown future. Maybe, Pharaoh thought, if he could just kill the ringleaders of the slave revolt, he could force the rest of the slaves back to bondage.

Moses also knew that most of the people walking the path out of Egypt did not really want to go. Yes, they had been miserable in Egypt, grunting and sweating under a weary life, but there is always a difference between complaining and changing. They were afraid that, if they changed, they would have to give up much of what defined them. 

Moses looked up at the wall of water. He got his name by being pulled out of the water and here he was again. He imagined remembering what it was like being a baby picked up out of that watertight basket. Had he been comfortable in that basket, with the feel of that familiar blanket which held the comforting smell of his mother? Had he cried when the hands with the smell unlike his mother brought him out into the fresh air?

He looked at the water wall again and imagined remembering what it was like for the baby he had been to have gone through that first wall of water as he had been born. Had he been comfortable in the womb and not wanting to leave? Had he cried when his body had been so rudely interrupted from what he had known for 9 months? Had he complained about the assault on his body as he squeezed through the opening into a new kind of life? Had he been startled by the noise and light and having to learn a new way of breathing and getting nutrition?  Had he complained that he had not been asked to be born as the water gushed out and he was pulled from that water? He had not asked to be born, but he was learning how to treasure every moment after.

Moses looked again at the wall of water and saw the monsters of the deep peering out through the clear water. He had been a man of the desert so long that he had never been face to face with such curious creatures like sharks and whales. He looked in the eyes of the whale and saw that they looked back at him with curiosity. Moses instinctively put his hand into the wall in order to touch this creature, and the whale pulled away. The whale had been afraid of him. “Imagine that”, he thought, “here the whale is scores bigger than me and yet the whale is the one afraid. Is it part of being a created being that we share the curse of fear?” 

The Old Man thought, “Maybe the reason the animals recoil in fear has to with the fact that they sense the violence in the humans, and they run away from what they do not understand. Animals understand the food chain as part of existence, but they do not understand senseless violence.” The Old Man knew that humans are part of the same creation of which the whale is a part.  All of the creatures of God share curiosity, but is there something about humans where violence is always under the surface. 

The Old Man still had his hand in the wall of water, and he realized he was touching the depth of the sea with his hand and the depth of his being with his soul. He had killed a man years before, and when he had run away from prosecution for that crime, he had used violence to defend the daughters of the Priest of Midian from the shepherds at the well. The Priest had been so thankful for the violence used in the protection of his daughters that he gave one of his daughters, Zipporah, to Moses as a wife. She later called him her “bridegroom of blood”. In the struggle for power against Pharaoh, Moses had excused the violence of the death of the first born of the Egyptians as a recompense for the centuries of violence done to the Hebrew children. When will the violence ever end?

He thought, “The violence will only end when there is a trust that all is being redeemed. Trust is hard as I look at these walls of water; can I trust that the walls of water will not break and drown me? I walk one step at a time, but these walls seem so threatening that my fear that I will not be able to hold these walls up threatens to break through. I can put my hand through the walls, and I know that I cannot hold them up. These walls are being held up by my relationship with the one who is greater than myself. It is the ground of my being that holds the wall, and it is my trust in Him or Her that allows me to walk one step at a time by the walls which can engulf me.”  

Moses thought, “Maybe going through the water is really important as a symbol of going through the birth trauma, of leaving a whole way of thinking and of living behind and finding a new way of life on the other side of the water after it breaks. Maybe when the walls of water break and come tumbling down, drowning the past, then I might have a life without fear in my heart.  One step with trust is followed by another step in trust, for the journey to the Promised Land is only reached one step at a time, and the point is not the destination but the journey, which I know will take all of my life.”

The Old Man chuckles,  “I know that it is only a matter of time before Pharaoh’s chariots and chariot drivers will catch up to us. But Pharaoh trusts only in himself, and trusting only in oneself does not keep the walls of water from flooding our lives. If that is the case, then the High Horse and its rider will be tossed into the sea.”

The Old Man Walking Through the Water

Pulling out of the water

Standing like a wall on either side

Carrying their heavy burdens

Differing between complaining and changing

Standing like a wall on either side

Imagining remembering what it was like

        Differing between complaining and changing

Having not been asked to be born

Imagining remembering what it was like

Creatures of God sharing curiosity

Having not been asked to be born

Horse and Rider tossed into the sea

Creatures of God sharing curiosity

Carrying their heavy burdens

Horse and Rider tossed into the sea

Pulling out of the water

The Old Man Crosses the Nile

You Tube video is at :  http://youtu.be/MmtJrEjtdaY

I am continuing an experiment to move away from the lecturing and academic analysis of Biblical texts and move instead toward reflection on the events in the Bible and life. Jesus did not lecture, he told stories. The prophets did not do academic lectures; rather, they shared dreams, encounters, and sang songs. I will offer my reflection, and then I will take thoughts from that reflection and make a poem in the French Pontoum form. Academic lectures pass on what the lecturer thinks is the one simple true point, while reflection and poetry invite the listener to enter into a deeper interaction and response. 

A Reflection and Poem for Pentecost XIII (proper 18)   All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC September 7, 2014                                                                   Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Exodus 12:1-14                  Psalm 149                            Romans 13:8-14                Matthew 18:15-20

The Old Man Crosses the Nile

The Old Man climbed aboard the felucca in order to cross the river to the island where the bricks are made. Then the grizzled old operator of the craft said, “I know you; you are the one called Moses, the one who comes through the water. You have turned Waset, the City of the Scepter, upside down.   I am Kumat. My father named me “the one who is the black land”, after my country of the black rich fertile land of the flooding of the Nile. I am the land and you are the water. I remember you when my father used to run this craft, and you were part of the royal party that would inspect the brick works and grumble about how the Hebrew slaves were not working hard enough. How does it feel to see contempt from the other side?” 

The Old Man replied: “Now I hear the cries of the people not as complaints from the lazy but as the truth spoken out of pain when the foot of the oppressor is standing on neck of the oppressed. My God opened my ears and now I cannot get rid of it. I come to the City of the Scepter to speak truth to power.”

Kumat said, “I know those cries well, and this struggle between you and Pharaoh has increased the cries even further. Your people have had to make more bricks with less straw. Then you and the magicians of Pharaoh with your competing tricks of competing Gods have turned the economy into a disaster. Come on - do you think the people are stupid and do not remember the past? I have been on the River for decades. That bit of turning the Nile into blood is an illusion which seems to happen from time to time as the red growth in the river chokes the air out of the water and the entire fish population dies, leaving the water undrinkable. The Ibis birds die in huge numbers from eating the rotting fish and, since they usually eat frogs as well, the frog population gets out of hand and they swarm all over the place. Then they die and the land is filled with gnats and flies.  Don’t even get me started on the hail, the storms, the boils on the cattle and then the people, the locusts, and the darkness during the days and nights when the sand blows in from the desert and fills the air so we cannot see. Give me a break; all of these are natural events.”

The Old Man said: “You are right; they are natural. They are not the problem, but they are the consequence of the problem caused by your rulers who are so far removed from neighbor and nature that they no longer see themselves as stewards of the gifts of the land given by God’s hand. They simply exploit the people and land for all they can get out of them.  I remember a saying by the people on the Upper Nile: ‘when two bull elephants fight each other over control, it is the people that are trampled.’ Your leaders are the bull elephants, and blood will be the result.”

The felucca came to the island and the Old Man walked down the plank set out by Kumat. However, the boat shifted, and the Old Man fell off the plank and landed in the red mud.  His hands and robe were covered by the bloody red muck. Kumat laughed and said, “Now it looks as if you are covered with blood. You and your God create disturbances, and blood is the result of your challenge of the way things are.”

The Old Man said, “Indeed there will be blood. There have been centuries of the blood of the oppressed, and now there will be the blood of those who have benefited from the evil done on their behalf. My wife once made a joke that I was truly a bridegroom of blood for her. My hands are full of blood, for the innocent will die as well and the cries of the poor will resonate with the cries of the powerful having their hopes destroyed.”

Kumat recoiled. “So, your God is like all the other Gods who rely on horror to cow the people into following them, glorifying in terror that demands the blood of the innocent for things they never did.”

The Old Man: “My God does not cause that blood to be shed, but bloodshed is a consequence of the evil that has been done for generations. We, humans like you and I, are the ones who spend much of our lives trying to lord it over each other by physical or economic power. Is the death of a child by lack of freedom or food or medical care less horrific than a sudden death by physical violence? The second kind of death we call deplorable, and the first kind of death we call regrettable, but dead is dead either by things we have done or things we have left undone, and we are all responsible.”

Weighing of the Heart from the Egyptian Book of  the Dead

Kumat sighed, “This is true in my religion, where Anubis takes the “Ka”, the soul of the dead, to the scales and places the heart on one side and the feather of Ma’at, truth, on the other.  If the heart weighs more than the feather, the heart is fed to Ammit and the soul dies. We are indeed responsible.”

The Old Man agreed.  “In the name of my God and in the Spirit of your God, I have called on this community to repent of the evil of greed and the neglect of compassion; but you would not. It is now the moment for you to wake from your sleep, for this is the beginning of months of a new way of being. Take the blood of a lamb and place it the posts of your house tonight as a sign that you will shed no more blood by action or inaction, so the angel of death will pass over your house.”

Kumat replied, “I will not spend my life in fear of mere superstition. I am content to do my work here on the great river.  What have the Hebrews to do with me and me with them?”

The Old Man sighed. “We are all connected to each other. There will be weeping in the heavens, echoing the choices your leaders have made. You and I are different. You are of the land as you have your feet planted firmly on facts, and I am from the water and have my being in the world of the spirit.  We see the world in different ways and yet we need each other. I need your solidity and you need my ability to dream as we meet and have our being in the sacred space between us. We do not become a “one plus one equals one” - one mass of a combination of water and land and become mud - nor do we stay always separated, “a one plus one equals two”.  Rather we become “one plus one equals three” - you, me, and the sacred space between us – constantly, dynamically, giving to each other new ways of seeing. My God is this way, and I am called to be in this non-dual way of thinking with neighbor and enemy, who are both indeed, God’s people with me. When we remember this day in the ages to come, we will both drink of the tears of memory and ask for the power to compassionately forgive. There is a song my people sing: ‘For the LORD takes pleasure in the people * and adorns the poor with victory.’”

Kumat proposed: “May your God and my God find peace with each other, for we mere mortals seem never to forgive.” 

The Old Man said: “It is not for our Gods to make peace, but for us humans to gather in the name of peace and find the divine in the space between and within us as we agree to bind and set loose peace here on earth. That peace will be bound and set free by the name that is above and beyond all names.”

Kumat waved goodbye and prayed, “May the angel of death pass over your house this night.”

The Old man replied, “And may you know the peace of God on this day and forever.”

The Old Man Crosses the Nile

On the island where bricks are made

Seeing contempt from the other side

I hear the cries of the people

As the truth spoken out of pain

Seeing contempt from the other side 

Your competing tricks of competing Gods

As the truth spoken out of pain

Being an illusion which seems to happen

Your competing tricks of competing Gods

The consequence of the problem

Being an illusion which seems to happen

Meeting in sacred space between us

The consequence of the problem

I hear the cries of the people

Meeting in sacred space between us

On the island where bricks are made