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neurological dryer lint

dirty deeds... and the dunderchief

 

you must unlearn what you have learned

people say "don't read the bible as if it were a textbook or a manual or a business report" or whatever. crap, i've said it a hundred times myself. i confess i've never had any idea how to change how i read it. it's just how it happens.

i guess comparably i do read some things differently than others. i'll grab tolkein and read that differently than eldredge or miller, even differently than william gibson. with tolkein i feel more joy and walk into the room with that vibe. with gibson i expect to be confused and depressed. and i read shakespeare or frost, or yeats' beautiful poem...

wine comes in at the mouth
and love comes in at the eye
and that is all we know of truth
for we grow old and die
i lift the glass up to my mouth
i look at you, and sigh
i read that and, crap, how do you describe how you read that? how it's different? how my brain hears that differently. how i'm in a different state of mind.

all this is to say, things were different a few days ago when i started reading lamentations. somehow my brain switched gears - and i thought before i started reading, 'this is poetry, j, not a to-do list or a lecture to analyze'.

it's really good stuff. really good. jeremiah hits the first two chapters bleeding in anguish about the state of his people and how miserable they are. how ruined they are because of the way they cheated on their God.
To what can I liken you,
that I may comfort you,
O Virgin Daughter of Zion?
Your wound is as deep as the sea.
Who can heal you?
and you FEEL that pain, the despair of their loss. it is the despair of every human heart that is missing the thing it was created to receive everything from. and yet...
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."
the stuff just strikes me. it wasn't like i learned anything or whatever when i read this - but i experienced something different. i didn't have another thing i realized was wrong with me that i should pray to have fixed or whatever. i simply felt the despair of the israelites and the bleak but solid hope of the author. i hope i feel like this again, that this isn't as fleeting as things seem to be with me sometimes.

 

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