Isaiah 12:2-6
Advent 3 - Year C
Easter Vigil - Years A, B, C
"pull up buckets of water from the wells of salvation" (vs3)
Where do you find your vital force to be sustained?
How many wells of salvation do you attend to?
Do you play with virtual wells?
Future wells? or only past and present wells?
Do you share the water you draw?
All through scripture, wells play an important part. Many relationships and insights come at wells.
A related image is that of the old pump that needs to be primed before it would gush forth. If you want to pursue this image there is a wonderful song by John McCutcheon, Water From Another Time.
Prime your pump by remembering your heroes - that is another well, the well of memories and dreams. How do you draw upon your past, give thanks in the present, and apply both to the future?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/december2003.html
I'm not a Hebrew scholar so anything you see me do with it ought to first be discounted and then questioned and questioned again. With that disclaimer I note the word "salvation" and an indication that its root can be read as either causative (to save) or passive (be saved). I am stimulated by the friction between two forms, energized by seeing more elemental particles escaping from a collision of words as well as atoms.
Presumably both forms point the action of salvation from G*D (causative) to us (passive). Kazantzakis' Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises and Bernstein's Kaddish: Symphony No. 3 turn that around.
Does a reversal of salvation verbiage bother or enervate? Can Christmas or a "Second Coming" (as if this were not an every moment experience/possibility) be seen anew as "G*D with US and that withness passing the gift of salvation back and forth?
If I were to write a second time on this passage I might take the translators of the New Revised Standard Version to task for leaving the word "song" out of verse 2. Most other folks envision G*D as "strength and song" while the NRSV has it "strength and might". This is a case where parallelism is helped by contrast rather than repetition.
If I were to write a third time I would wonder about verse 1 and its absence here. It is the compassion, the comfort, that has gone before that sets up the rest of the joy. A case could be made for compassion-less joy being no joy at all. Without compassion, joy is only a lovely word covering forced jollity.
- - -
compassion or comfort
is a prior word
so often left out
of an appreciation or analysis
of our current situation
compassion or comfort
leads the way
away from
a one-way dogmatization
of many-faced salvation
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
Without verse 1 we lose an important perspective of timing.
I appreciate The Jewish Study Bible noting these verses (1-6) are, "A song of thanksgiving to be recited in the ideal age." While we can certainly play with these words in our current less than ideal time and can even attempt to live as though they are already true, there are some things that can't be known until their time - long-term relationships and children are two easy examples and you may have others according to your experience in other fields.
Here is the translation from The Jewish Study Bible:
In that day, you shall say:
"I give thanks to You, O Lord!
Although You were wroth with me,
Your wrath has turned back and You comfort me,
Behold the God who gives me triumph!
I am confident, unafraid;
For Yah the Lord is my strength and might [or song],
And He has been my deliverance."
Joyfully shall you draw water
From the fountains of triumph,
And you shall say on that day:
"Praise the Lord, proclaim His name.
Make His deeds known among the peoples;
Declare that His name is exalted.
Hymn the Lord,
For He has done gloriously;
Let this be made known
In all the world!
Oh, shout for joy,
You who dwell in Zion!
For great in your midst
Is the Holy One of Israel."
- - -
May you not be wrothed upon and may you hymn G*D and Neighbor and One Another and Enemy.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html
An interesting phrase: “G*D has become my salvation”.
Compare and contrast that with another statement: “G*D is my salvation”.
If salvation is connected with some form of wholeness, might we say, “G*D and I are becoming whole together”? What shifts in our addressing life if salvation is a process rather than either an accomplished end to be remembered or some result to be anticipated. This makes Advent more process oriented than focused on some external mechanism having left the stars and arrived at our humble abode.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/12/isaiah-122-6.html
Ah, finally, what will I trust? Of what will I not be afraid?
Am I more fearful of being lost or afraid of not having a loss? Both separate me from well water where lovers meet and secrets are shared. My one story keeps me from all of my experience and tradition. My one story holds new possibilities at bay that don’t fit nicely into allotted slots.
Is it “surely” that G*D is my health and healing? If G*D had not forsaken our hope before, this would be much easier. I am being asked to re-enter old territory of forsakenness and stake out where to drill for a new well while bankrupt.
Praise be for temptations. Praise be for enemies. Praise be for unpeaceful tears. Praise be for loneliness. Praise be for pain and parting. Praise be for death. Praise be for emptiness.
At this point I’ll take the question mark off those and leave them with periods, but I am not ready to give them exclamation points.
Are you still vigiling or have you dozed off like I have, several times?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/isaiah-122-6-vigil.html