This week we will consider four aspects of the practice of hope...hope from the God of life, hope toward the neighbor - as Walter Brueggemann says it. Today is part three.
The God of Hope did indeed accompany the hopers. The signs of that accompaniment were fire and cloud and name and glory and ark. If however, we think of praxis, we may imagine that the presence was in singing, singing that eventually became text, and thus the God of textual presence. Singing as praxis is the way hopers regularly defy Pharaonic power, even when frightened and anxious.
When we look back at resistance movements, there have always been songs. Even some simple one line chants. Most often, people sing songs filled with vision and promise. These are the ways the greatest powers of the day can be faced again and again with a sense of renewal and life that is not under the control of the powers of oppression and control. In fact, in song, we can gather alongside others who anticipate the coming of God's Reign even when there is no evidence that it is or will be at hand anytime soon. When we sing and pass along the images of hope, we do not do that in order to block out the reality all around us. Rather we sing to help us walk within a new reality even as the existing situations dominates. In the singing and in the corporate expression of hopefulness, the joys and the tears of the ancestors of the faith are joined with ours and there is that experience of hope that cannot be boxed in...it is simply present and we become much more alive for whatever it is we are to face. Celebration must take place when we are being push down by the many powers in our lives that attempt to keep us despairing and hopeless. Celebration through singing begins to show all who sing that the foundations of the powers really do shake under the vibrant life of faithful song.
Connection: Take note of how singing - even listening to singing within a group - seems to allow for something more than the words to whip around us. There is life in those melodies and words and images!
O Lord of the Dance, it is with a song in our hearts that we are able to face this day. We sing with all the saints for it is a simple gift that becomes our weapon of nonviolent resistance and the salve to heal our wounds. We give you thanks for such an ordinary and powerful gift. Amen.
The God of Hope did indeed accompany the hopers. The signs of that accompaniment were fire and cloud and name and glory and ark. If however, we think of praxis, we may imagine that the presence was in singing, singing that eventually became text, and thus the God of textual presence. Singing as praxis is the way hopers regularly defy Pharaonic power, even when frightened and anxious.
When we look back at resistance movements, there have always been songs. Even some simple one line chants. Most often, people sing songs filled with vision and promise. These are the ways the greatest powers of the day can be faced again and again with a sense of renewal and life that is not under the control of the powers of oppression and control. In fact, in song, we can gather alongside others who anticipate the coming of God's Reign even when there is no evidence that it is or will be at hand anytime soon. When we sing and pass along the images of hope, we do not do that in order to block out the reality all around us. Rather we sing to help us walk within a new reality even as the existing situations dominates. In the singing and in the corporate expression of hopefulness, the joys and the tears of the ancestors of the faith are joined with ours and there is that experience of hope that cannot be boxed in...it is simply present and we become much more alive for whatever it is we are to face. Celebration must take place when we are being push down by the many powers in our lives that attempt to keep us despairing and hopeless. Celebration through singing begins to show all who sing that the foundations of the powers really do shake under the vibrant life of faithful song.
Connection: Take note of how singing - even listening to singing within a group - seems to allow for something more than the words to whip around us. There is life in those melodies and words and images!
O Lord of the Dance, it is with a song in our hearts that we are able to face this day. We sing with all the saints for it is a simple gift that becomes our weapon of nonviolent resistance and the salve to heal our wounds. We give you thanks for such an ordinary and powerful gift. Amen.
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