Dangerous memories
Suffering makes exiles of us. It sends us into isolation. It separates us from others. It can blind us to all the possibilities of God.
Walter Brueggemann in his Cadences of Home lays out a way we who are exiled by our suffering can open ourselves to receive the newness of God. Brueggemann enumerates powerful ways we can go from exile to homecoming: “In the exile, Israel is driven back to its most dangerous memories. I suggest that in our exile … we also are now driven back to our most elemental memories.”
What are these so-called dangerous memories, and why are they dangerous? In my view, they are the ways and means used by God to sustain, preserve, and draw us out of our suffering. For some of us this included a shortening of our suffering; for others, it did not. Nevertheless, God’s presence was active, making use of sign and symbol, infusing us with grace, leaving, in effect, breadcrumbs we followed to come to where we are today. For me, this was a crucifix, a commercial on television, what I knew of Indigenous People, the lyrics to specific songs, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony in E minor. Each of these signs and symbols conveyed something about God. God used each to communicate a bit of His presence to me, and what comes with even a bit of God if not considerable possibility?
And why are these dangerous? They are dangerous because they are easily dismissed! They are dangerous because they require my recognition not of their effectiveness in upholding me — God didn’t insist I acknowledge His saving acts in order for the salvation to take place — but in their application in future difficulties. They are dangerous in this evil-soaked world of ours because they reveal that the world is far more soaked in God than it is in evil!
Oh, it may have appeared that my suffering made of me an exile. And it may appear that your suffering has done the same. Oh, but do look closer! Appearances deceive! Brueggemann may be giving us steps not to bring us back from exile as much as to show us we were never exiled in the first place!
Revelation
What are your dangerous memories?
Prayer
Oh God, I don’t want to feel exiled, but I do oftentimes! I am weary! I am weighed down! And, yet, I feel within me a power questioning these feelings, a power gently urging me to reconsider and find You within. May I ignite the memories of your presence in my past. May I allow those memories to burn. May I follow them into my present, a present complete with all the possibilities of You. Amen.
