We come to the third poem I’ve written drawing on the early chapters of Exodus, the Bible’s second book. I intend to go back and write more – in particular about the burning bush – and I’m amending this post to tell you I have done so, and you can read that new poem here. However this exploration proceeds, I’ll make sure numbers on the poems work with the story in Exodus, so they can be read together.
I was drawn to write from this foundational story as it begins at a mighty civilisation’s turning point – a time of divided peoples, of injustice, inequality, and exploitation. The world we are in right now seems to be at a turning point, where things cannot go on as they have been. I’ve been seeing echoes, and warnings, and hope, in this story from long ago.
For this poem, I have continued the theme of God saw, and God knew, from the previous poem, which you can read here. I have progressed the story to when Moses stood before the burning bush, and took off his sandals, for the ground is holy.
You can read more from the Exodus text here.
Some things struck me, in addition to the themes I’ve explored before. The first is, the matter of holy places, and temples. For those of us who have a practice of corporate worship, most gather in a set-aside space. Not all – there are many gatherings in homes and coffee shops and dance studios and woods where people, together, are open to the divine. Now, we cannot gather, and our relationship with these places is changed, as well as our relationship with our worshiping communities. Although I know, as the poem explores, that God has no need of temples, I find that maybe I do. I include two photos here from the ancient chapel of St Peter-on-the-wall, founded in the seventh century. And the wall of its name, the wall it is on, is Roman, so its history is very long. There is real peace in that space. I find my spirit soothed by such places. And I am finding, as the poems on this blog show, that I connect deeply with the divine in nature, too. I am increasingly barefoot, on holy ground. This seems a very deep and helpful truth, especially now. It gives me hope.
A little tentatively, I have been thinking about gods and idols as I’ve been reading Exodus, and wondering what our equivalents might be. As I’ve been mulling over our economy, the systems that drive our lives that seem bigger than any of us, I have reached for the ancient language of idol. I have found the word Mammon comes to mind, and it says something significant for our times. I’ve mentioned it briefly before, in my blog post on The company of bees. As a modern person, I’m aware I’m dipping my toes into something that may stir up ideas of superstition, and that I don’t really understand what these concepts of idol and god meant to those whose culture they belong to. But I do know that now, as ever, there are forces bigger than us, which we don’t seem to control, in our daily lives. We call them economics, or big corporations, or debt, or. The ancient stories suggest they have feet of clay, and can fall. They are human constructs, agreements and stories we hold in common about how the world works and what matters, they may become more…. but they are not laws of physics, and we can, through collective effort, change them.
I wonder what that might look like in our current world, where these systems, or machines, or idols, seem to be demanding the sacrifice of life to their ends. We can see that in some places with the response to coronavirus. We can definitely see it in how we contine to destroy ecosystems and drive creatures to extinction. Are these things really more important than life? Can we decide to do better?
Here, in this poem, I look at how the enslaved Hebrew people were forced to build temples to gods who didn’t hear them, or help them. I wonder how many people, in today’s economies, might feel they are doing something similar, as they are made to serve the demands for more, and faster, and cheaper.
This poem, though, only touches on these things. It turns to something more hopeful, a promise of the deep reality of the glory of God in all things, and carries echoes Isaiah 11, and our deep hope – of the dream of God, of the kingdom we pray will come. It circles back to the beginning, to considering a holy place, where we are safe, and heard. Even when there are no places of worship available to us, these things are true.
We can be grounded in the earth, in the depth of our connection to God, and to all.
Inside the chapel (660-662 AD), looking out.
Holy Ground, barefoot. Exodus poems 3
This people had no temple,
no worship-place.
This people built temples
for others,
for gods they dreaded,
rising in terrible power
over them, having
no regard for
their misery.
They prayed under
the weight of their burdens.
They cried out in
the unprayer of pain,
and God, having no need
of temples, heard,
as God always hears.
And God, leaning to the
brokenhearted, saw,
as God always sees.
For the very earth is holy.
The ground under our feet.
Take off your shoes and feel it,
feel the dry-ground-powder
and the sharp stones,
the infinite tiny beings
that call the earth home.
Take off your shoes.
Know you are part of
all this, part of the
the glory that fills
all things, as the waters
fill the seas.
You will be heard,
wherever you are.
You can listen,
wherever you are.
You are home.
Andrea Skevington 