The lovely Hebrew word 'Shalom', and a poem by Denise Levertov. First the tapestry. Now and again I've chosen a significant biblical word and set it in a contextual landscape. This is a representation of the Hebrew word 'shalom' against the background of Isaiah 35 which is a magnificent vision of a transformed landscape. Despite all appearances to the contrary, the desert shall blossom, there will be streams in the desert, the parched land will become fertile and there's joy all over the place. Shalom is peace, but so much more. Welfare; harmony; fruitfulness; flourishing; justice; contentment; safety – all of which make for peace, shalom.
Words form their meaning for us by the way we have seen and heard them used, and by the way we subsequently use them. I often use shalom as a blessing word to close an email. Two clear memories make this word a personal beatitude when I use it.
For 10 years I was Chaplain in a school for children and young people with additional support needs. School assembly finished with us all singing to each other "Shalom, my friends, Shalom my friends, Shalom, Shalom." Some words give a sound description to their meaning. A full school assembly all looking at each other as they sing out peace words as blessing, is the sound of revolution and the place where seeds of hope germinate and are nurtured in the mind and heart. Shalom was happening as they sang, embodied as they blessed each other – they were peace-making.
I discovered in Brueggemann a voice that took with great seriousness two conflicting and contested powers. The power of the text to reconfigure the imagination and interrogate the status quo of human political, economic, social and moral life, life as it is; and the power of that same status quo to pursue its own self-interests using whatever power-plays and structural barriers were necessary to manipulate, dominate and disempower those who question that status quo. The people of God stand between those two realities, the Bible text and the current status quo. Of the two visions of text and world, the call is toward the vision of shalom.
"If we are going to do God's word as well as talk about it, we need a vision to guide our doing and acting. Shalom can hardly be defined or reduced to a formula. And that is its power…Our faith comes to fullness as we are teased to think new thoughts, as our imagination is lured beyond 'business as usual.' " [page 11]
Near the end of the book Brueggemann provides A Shalom Lectionary. It is heavily indebted to Isaiah. Introducing texts from Isaiah and then from the wider biblical canon, Brueggemann sets those texts loose to fire imagination, convert minds and energise towards a new vision.
"Shalom is a vision rooted in the memories of faith, open to Gods promises and demands upon us, aware in the present that we are not our own. Neither the world nor the church needs to stay the way it is, because God is at work who makes all things new. Shalom conveys a sense of personal wholeness in a community of justice and caring that addresses itself to the needs of all humanity and all creation." [page 185]
This is a book that moves from semantic definitions to spiritual renewal, community justice, and transformation through the woven liturgy of prayer, worship and social action. If you had seen the faces of a hundred children and young people singing "Shalom my friends", you would have no doubt that they meant the words. In my mind, it takes the singing of the children, and the careful passion of Brueggemann the scholar, to create a vision we live toward – Shalom. It takes something else. It take the poet to give us the words.
MAKING PEACE.
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
[Denise Levertov, Making Peace, page 58]
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