Proverbs 3
H,
First, a happy new year in writing. It has been a shake and a tumble since we last used letters to make words and then talk. You know the obvious reasons. The major upheavals and epic reversals that are the just signifier of an ordinary life occurred. We have that old argument between us about literature where I go on about the epic scale of the normal life and you make those hateful snoring sounds to show me how you don’t care. Well, this year, I think, proved my point in a glance. It grew out of our hands and ended far off the moorings from which it began. Details ruin the mystery of context so it is fair to say only that we do not know anything and our faux pas certainties are the more the mark of ignorance than the sign of wisdom.
Is this not the thing Elyon has been telling us over the years? We make these sweeping statements about our lives, about others, about the road ahead but we only live in the present predicted by the past. We give no credence to the outlier of the blind side. This is a good space to start the New Year in: we know in part, we see in part, we prophesy in part, we live in parts but we are called to be whole in love. “Part” seems hyperbolic. We see in blurred images and undeveloped pictures.
This is not the life we wanted, is it? We thought the years would change God and we would know better. We are the ones who have always needed the change. It is like you said the other day, the old ode to power packs and one minute calls and simple love.
Wisdom is to know how much we do not know. It is to encounter this vast ignorance daily and to embrace it as a start. We can only be taught anything if we admit we need to learn it. So, dear friend, enough with this interrupting God and rolling our eyes at new lessons disguised as “things we should have known ten years ago.” We do not know them yet and that is why the lessons are reappearing. We are not on the stupid clock of seventy years plus. We are not running a race that is a slightly spookier version of the rat race. This is about the things that will always be and the person we will be in eternity. It will take a fair stretch of time to move from these sinful bodies into a heavenly home-space. How long?
Well, we do not know now do we?