The Park Forum

No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.

― J.R.R. Tolkien

Scripture: Genesis 40.23

Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.

Reflection: Dare to Act

By Søren Kierkegaard

Can there be something in life that has power over us which little by little causes us to forget all that is good? And can this ever happen to anyone who has heard the call of eter­nity quite clearly and strongly?

If this can ever be, then one must look for a cure against it. Praise be to God that such a cure exists—to quietly make a deci­sion. A decision joins us to the eternal. It brings what is eternal into time.

How wretched and miserable it is to find in a person many good intentions but few good deeds. And there are other dan­gers too, dangers of sin. With all your good intentions, you must not forget your duty, neither should you forget to do it with joy. And strive to carry your burdens and responsibilities in a surrendered way. If you don’t, there is a danger of losing your decisiveness; of going through life without courage and fading away in death.

Whoever remains faithful to his decision will realize that his whole life is a struggle. Such a person does not fall into the temptation of proudly telling oth­ers of what he has done with his life. Nor will he talk about the “great decisions” he has made. He knows full well that at deci­sive moments you have to renew your resolve again and again and that this alone makes good the decision and the decision good.

We must not support high and important things while ig­noring the practical, daily stuff of life. Indeed, decision is some­ thing truly great; the life of eternity shines over decision. But the light of eternity does not shine on every decision.

Therefore, dare to renew your decision. It will lift you up again to have trust in God. For God is a spirit of power and love and self-control, and it is before God and for him that every de­cision is to be made. Dare to act on the good that lies buried within your heart. Confess your decision and do not go ashamed with downcast eyes as if you were treading on forbidden ground.

Prayer: The Request for Presence

Early in the morning I cry out to you, for in your word is my trust. Psalm 119.147

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 40 (Listen – 2:59)
Mark 10 (Listen – 6:42)

 

True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.

― Timothy Keller

Scripture: Genesis 39.17-18

And she told [Potiphar] the same story, saying, “The Hebrew servant, whom you have brought among us, came in to me to laugh at me. But as soon as I lifted up my voice and cried, he left his garment beside me and fled out of the house.”

Reflection: Deepest Desire

The Park Forum

Every ancient culture had a standard for how to respond to adultery. Few of these standards were humane by any modern definition. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest legal writings in human history—and is the source for numerous cultures’ standards afterward—commands:

If a man’s wife should be seized lying with another male, they shall bind them and cast them into the water; if the wife’s master allows his wife to live, then the king shall allow his subject (i.e., the other male) to live.

This law is very similar to another in the Torah, as well as to how the Egyptian elite would have responded to Joseph’s alleged infidelity with Potiphar’s wife. From a legal perspective it is stunning he lived. From an emotional perspective it is more stunning he did not offer himself in response to a woman’s desire.

Centuries after Joseph, Ambrose of Milan would observe:

Though [Joseph] sprung from the noble family of the patriarchs, he was not ashamed of his base slavery; rather he adorned it with his ready service, and made it glorious by his virtues.

He knew how to be humble who had to go through the hands of both buyer and seller, and called them, Lord. Hear him as he humbles himself: “Because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?”

Full of humility are his words, full, too, of chastity. Of humility, for he was obedient to his Lord; of an honorable spirit, for he was grateful; full, also, of chastity, for he thought it a terrible sin to be defiled by so great a crime.

Chastity, in other words, was not Joseph’s chief virtue. Somewhere along the way Joseph had learned to see past himself—every decision he made was a derivative of his humility. Something other than personal satisfaction became Joseph’s deepest desire.

Prayer: The Morning Psalm

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. — Psalm 131:1–2

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 39 (Listen – 3:08)
Mark 9 (Listen – 6:16)

Correction: A previous version of this post attributed the leading quote on humility to C.S. Lewis.

It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes.

― Elie Wiesel

Scripture: Genesis 35.10

And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” So he called his name Israel.

Reflection: Not Forgotten
The Park Forum

What does it mean to be Jewish? I’ve posed this question to a handful of rabbis over the years; most respond by saying it means to struggle, citing Jacob’s wrestling with God prior to receiving his new name and ultimately the name Israel. All of the rabbis draw from a shared past to explain the present.

The ability to hold hope for the future is built on the ability to remember the past. We see this in the first parts of Israel’s story—God’s faithfulness is expressed through the word, “remember.” When the authors of scripture say God remembers someone they are not contrasting it to God’s forgetfulness, but the world’s.

Our forgetfulness takes many forms—all of which compound the brokenness of the world. “Indifference,” Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said in his 1999 speech at The White House, “is not only a sin, it is a punishment.”

Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor—never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees—not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Perhaps faith, then, is a calling to join God in remembering. As we remember what it means to be made in the image of God we remember the most vulnerable. This act of mindfulness in the present is the foundation of everything we hope faith will do in the future. Wiesel concludes:

When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of disease, violence, famine.

Some of them—so many of them—could be saved.

Prayer: The Refrain

“I will appoint a time,” says God.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 35-36 (Listen – 9:33)
Mark 6 (Listen – 7:23)

This Weekend’s Readings
Genesis 37 (Listen – 4:56) Mark 7 (Listen – 4:28)
Genesis 38 (Listen – 4:24) Mark 8 (Listen – 4:29)

Storytelling is a trinitarian act that unites writer, text, and reader in a collage of understanding.

― Phyllis Trible

Scripture: Genesis 34.2

And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw [Dinah], he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her.

Reflection: Texts of Terror
By Phyllis Trible

To contrast an Old Testament God of wrath with a New Testament God of love is fallacious. The God of Israel is the God of Jesus, and in both testaments resides in tension between divine wrath and divine love.

If art imitates life, scripture likewise reflects it in both holiness and horror. Reflections themselves neither mandate nor manufacture change; yet by enabling insight, they may inspire repentance. In other words, sad stories may yield new beginnings.

As a critique of culture and faith in light of misogyny, feminism is a prophetic movement examining the status quo, pronouncing judgment, and calling for repentance…. It interprets stories of outrage on behalf of their female victims in order to recover a neglected history, to remember a past that the present embodies, and to pray that these terrors shall not come to pass again.

Jacob’s wrestling at the Jabbok provides the story for our journey. The fight is close to an even match. As Jacob prevails, the man puts out of joint the hollow of Jacob’s thigh. Their physical struggle yields to a verbal contest, with Jacob refusing to let the man go unless he blesses him.

The night visitor deflects this demand by eliciting a confession of the name Jacob as trickster, cheater, or supplanter. To reorient the identity of the patriarch, he changes that name to Israel. What Jacob wants, he does not get on his own terms. The outcome acknowledges both the crippling victory and the magnificent defeat of that night. Jacob’s life is preserved, but he limps as he leaves the Jabbok.

As a paradigm for encountering terror, this story offers sustenance for the present journey. To tell and hear tales of terror is to wrestle demons in the night, without a compassionate God to save us. In combat we wonder about the names of the demons.

Our own names, however, we all too frightfully recognize. We struggle mightily, only to be wounded. But yet we hold on, seeking a blessing: the healing of wounds and the restoration of health. Indeed, as we leave the land of terror, we limp.

*Excerpt from Texts of Terror by Phyllis Trible.

Prayer: The Request for Presence

Bow down your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and in misery. Keep watch over my life, for I am faithful; save your servant who puts his trust in you. — Psalm 86:1–2

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 34 (Listen – 4:18)
Mark 5 (Listen – 5:21)

True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.

― Timothy Keller

Scripture: Genesis 33.4

Esau ran to meet [Jacob] and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.

Reflection: The Predicament of Self-Obsession
The Park Forum

Finding ones’ self most typically involves a journey inward. The instinct that this self-concerned posture is beneficial to thriving as a human being is as unquestioned as it is primordial—though it has often been proven wrong. The best way to understand ones’ self isn’t found in deep isolation, but in the context of the planet, a community of friends, in service of others, and in light of the divine.

One such ancient story that demonstrates this is found in the life of Jacob. Considering only himself and his own future, the younger swindles his elder brother Esau’s birth right from him. Later, caught on the bank of a river with a man he believes to be divine, he demands a blessing for himself.

Even when Jacob reunited with his brother, he took steps to protect himself—dividing his wealth and sending his family ahead. It’s easy to underestimate the cost of inward focus until we see it play out in Jacob’s life. Just hours after he meets Esau, Jacob panics and flees. Never to see his brother again.

Self-obsession is the nature of brokenness. In A Preface to Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis writes of Milton’s devil:

Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament.

Certainly, he has no choice. He has chosen to have no choice. He has wished to ‘be himself’, and to be in himself and for himself, and his wish has been granted. The Hell he carries with him is, in one sense, a Hell of infinite boredom.

To admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.

We are supposed to find ourselves in Jacob’s story—anxious and myopic, insecure in our blessing—but we are not supposed to be content with this. For as our eyes open to the world and people around us, so our hearts open to receive the glory of God. As Lewis concludes of Milton’s protagonist, ‘Adam, though locally confined to a small park on a small planet, has interests that embrace “all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth.’”

Prayer: The Request for Presence

Show us the light of your countenance, O God, and come to us.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 33 (Listen – 2:59)
Mark 4 (Listen – 5:01)

*Update: An earlier version of this post misattributed the quote at the top to C.S. Lewis