Seasons will pass you by...
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| The Close to the Edge gatefold. An epiphany. Artist: Roger Dean. |
Our task presently is to read chapters 3 and 4 and seek to discover, daily, where the ideas of Ecclesiastes intersect our lives.
Autumn, the time of harvest, is for giving thanks: Thanksgiving. This explains the wine and the bread we share. The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, in the fall, is a celebration of God's gifts in the harvest. This is when the community reads Ecclesiastes together. It is a reminder to be thankful, grateful for God's gifts. It is also a reminder to the People that they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. They lived homeless for decades in tents. This is why they live in tents again during the Feast of Tabernacles.
In our conversation(s), we shared stories about the homeless and about finding a new home. Qoheleth, the speaker in Ecclesiastes, is a storyteller. The book is best understood as a telling of Solomon’s story. Perhaps the best way to interpret and understand it is through our own stories and by leaving space for others to tell their stories. We become listeners. Qoheleth's and our own stories are often conflicting, dense, and complex. We need to think beyond our own "zones of interest" to hear the stories of others. Beyond our self, our family, and our tribe.
But is Ecclesiastes true?
I have told the story of ‘my old friend’ coming to speak to me -- telling his story of despair: feeling betrayed, having had messy marriages, having lost his job, his business, his death is approaching, and his country is dividing. He is beginning to question his faith. How do I respond? Criticism? Correction? We, collectively as a group, decided that it is best to first listen, then affirm. My 'old friend' is actually Solomon. This story is his.
Is Qoheleth speaking true things? Things that are correct? Or is he just speaking with honesty? Honesty about how he feels, regret and despair. It is a cri de couer. A cry of the heart. “I know. I understand,” becomes our reply. Is the purpose of Ecclesiastes to find connection amongst the disconnection? To find a pathway to a ministry of reconciliation?
The wine and the bread have a long history in sacred celebration. Think of Abraham, who was blessed by Melchizedek (the King of Salem and Priest of the Most High God) when he brought out bread and wine. From the vineyards, we as a group shared bread and wine and went searching for an epiphany. Epiphany means shining a light on the surface. A revelation, as it were. But Ecclesiastes is best conceived as chiaroscuro, the interplay in a painting of shadows and light. A dark place with flickers of light. Shadows and light capture hevel, which is like a vapour or a fast-moving cloud. Undoubtedly, there is despair in the biblical text, in our conversation, and in all of our ongoing conversations. But Qoheleth leads us to a rising faith, a faith that rises above the despair.
So, Ecclesiastes is "true" in the sense of "truing" a wheel. You adjust all of the spokes to make the wheel perfect and round; true. Ecclesiastes is truer than the way we might whitewash The Faith. We tend to create simple answers that exterminate all questions, birthing a reductionistic God. Ecclesiastes revives unanswered questions and returns the hearer to a magnanimous God.
The French translation for God in scripture is L'Eternel, The Eternal. Hence, the Hebrew word olam enters into our conversation, meaning eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11). Olam, eternity, is the hiding place of God. In our conversation, we talked of how we become free to talk to others about this God, and about our doubts and our questions. We do not have all of the answers. Our epiphany is that we know about The Eternal One, and that we know that we do not fully know or understand.
"Did Solomon, as Qoheleth, have an intuition?" Did he understand or sense something in the corners of eternity about the Christ? Is Ecclesiastes, in some way, a series of visions like (but unlike) the Book of Revelation? Qoheleth speaks about the things "I have seen." His visions are about what happens "under the sun" on the face of the earth.
Yet, for Qoheleth, the visions seem to be of close experiences with suffering humanity and of a God that seems far away. But what if God is so close that God experiences, bodily, all of our human pain?
The text calls out for the One who literally comes alongside as the Comforter, the indwelling Spirit who cries out. The scriptures that we read, including Ecclesiastes, are God-breathed. God is literally close enough that we can feel God's breath upon us.
There are two themes that we encounter in chapters 3 and 4. First, the Eternal One of the olam, and our vantage point in the timescape of eternity. We have begun to understand this only in part from our conversation.
The second theme is lawlessness in the halls of justice and the confusing question of oppression by those in power. Unfortunately, we did not find time to discuss this together. Undoubtedly, we will have found that the themes of Ecclesiastes, this one of oppression in particular, haunt our daily lives as we read the text and as the text reads us.
