Prophet-ting with God

 

A hand was there, stretching out to me and holding a scroll…on it was written lamentations, weeping, and moaning – I opened my mouth; and ate the scroll it tasted sweet as honey – Ezekiel 2:9-10 and 3:2-3

 

Re-read the above quote from the Prophet Ezekiel, who you might remember is the one called and commissioned to preach to a valley of dried up, gnarly, gross graveyard of bones!  Talk about a tough crowd…and to think I get offended when people don’t laugh at my lame jokes on Sunday!  Before Ezekiel went to the Church of Dried-Up Souls, he had a vision of being given a piece of paper with words of heartbreak, hurt, and soul ache.  In other words, he was given the Boston Globe and the New York Times, and every political pundit out there was trying to capture and keep your attention!  All that cynicism and criticism you consume and consume your soul day after day, written down on a piece of paper.  Ezekiel not only brings this so close to his heart and ears that he can hear the voices of the immigrants and marginalized and the hatred that fuels the hearts of too many, but Ezekiel also eats this piece of paper. 

 

Why? 

 

Good question.  I don’t know.  Why do we keep returning to read the news each day?  Why do we keep our news station of choice in the background all day, blasting and blaring, re-wiring and rewriting our minds and souls?  Why do we think that somehow this informs us?  I know my grandparents drilled into me the importance of being an “informed” citizen, but we are drenched and drowning in information, and I am not sure our souls are breathing anymore.  Don’t hear me say that you can stick your head in the sand or fingers in your ears to sing, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you,” to the world.  Nope.  But neither do I think that hearing “experts” arguing about whatever the topic de jour is helping to make me a better citizen. 

 

Eziekiel hears this hurt and heartbreak and lets it enter his life.  And then, he eats the paper, and did you catch that it is sweet like honey to the tip of his tongue?  Wait, what?  How could hurt be sweet?  Shouldn’t the paper taste like a Carolina Reaper pepper?  Shouldn’t the scroll be sourer than rhubarb mixed with grapefruit? 

 

The prophets were masters of paradox.  A paradox is the ability to hold two conflicting and contradictory thoughts or ways of being at the same time without choosing.  An example of this is laughter at a funeral while you are crying tears of sadness.  An example of this is dropping your child off at school with your heart ready to burst with pride while feeling raw sadness that the summer chapter is ending.  A paradox is holding both the pain and the possibility of a moment.  Think about how we hold Good Friday and Easter Sunday as both being true.  There is a liminal in-betweenness of God who is not finished yet.  Where are there paradoxes in your life right now?  How might those tension points be what author Valarie Kaur describes as darkness as being both a tomb and womb ~ both an ending and beginning. May the paradoxes of this present moment open you to the Holy Movement of God who hovers and still dances on the tips of our tongues with hope sweet as honey.  Amen.