Emptying Out, In Time of Distance

Emptying Out, In Time of Distance

Finally, it is just the Other and me.

I was used to having others around,

couldn't figure out up from down,

failing to see the Other as a “Thee”.

How do we share our vulnerability,

under all the heavy layers of habit,

keeping each other amused? Grab it

away, unmask our tired pleasantry!

Holding each other fast at the Ford

of our Jakkob, we make a promise

to not let go until we give to bless,

binding ourselves with a new cord.

We'll not cross alone dark rivers;

but long for what a future delivers.

The Hebrew Testament Revised Common Lectionary Lesson for Sunday the 2^nd of August, (Proper 13 A, Ninth Sunday after Pentecost) continues the Jacob saga. Jacob must meet his future with the brother Esau, whom he betrayed decades before. He is at the Ford of the river Jabbok, named for the Hebrew word for “emptying out”. Here, he will separate himself from his family and all his possessions, empty out. Here, he will empty himself out to meet with God in the darkness. Here, he will wrestle with an “Angel”, which I see as a circumlocution for God by the editors of Genesis. In this struggle, Jacob will not let go until he is blessed. When I have seen sculptures of this wrestling, it is difficult to tell if this is struggle of mastery or an embracing struggle of love; or it is both/and. To me, it is also a story about how we have a relationship with others and how we have a prayer life with God. Every night is a River of Jabbok night, when we have to cross the next day into an unknown future.

In this time when we have the Pandemic and we are intensely isolated. The old habits we have of spending time with our neighbors, going to work, randomly running across aquaintences in the daily rush of life, are dying. Things are not the same. We are used to the pattern of returning howe to ask and answer the question, “What's new?” But as we have not left the house, we have to go deeper into ourselves to share what is “new” to us.

Church has changed with the concepts of Physical Distancing and we miss the old ways. Another way of looking at this time is of a birthing of something new, because we have this nagging belief, that while things do die; there is a resurrection.