It rained on our drive home from Vancouver. Although “rained” doesn’t adequately describe the downpour. Genesis says that at creation, God “divided the waters above from the waters below.” On that drive home, the waters above and below re-united.

            There was so much rain on the road that our car used four extra litres of fuel going home than going out, on exactly the same road, just squishing water out of the way of the tires.

            I would have looked for an Ark, if I could have seen it through a windshield streaming with water.

            Oddly, my rearview mirrors were still clear. Because the rain wasn’t hitting them at all. I could see clearly, back down the highway.

            It reminded me of one of Marshall McLuhan’s aphorisms: "We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror." 

            It’s a metaphoric way of saying that we can’t see the future. Our windshield wipers can’t clean the glass. We can’t see very far ahead.

20/20 hindsight

            We know, in general terms, that we’re all going to grow older, and die. But we have no way of knowing how it will happen, or when.

            Of course, we can prepare for some eventualities. We can save for retirement. We can take precautions against disasters. We can foster relationships. We can try to stay healthy.

            It’s only when we look back at our lives that we recognize significant moments – those times when our careers, our relationships, our health, took an unexpected turn.

            Hindsight has 20/20 vision.

            Those of us with a religious/spiritual bent tend to identify God with some of those bends we took.

            But that’s where God was. Past tense. Not where God is now.

            The biblical book of Exodus includes an interesting story. Moses wants a personal relationship with this new God, who carves commands into stone tablets, who is experienced so far only as a pillar of fire and a column of smoke.

            “Let me see your face,” Moses pleads.

            “That’s not possible,” God replies. “But if you hide in this cleft in the rock, I’ll let you see my backside after I have passed by.”

Out front, ahead of us

            I’ve had fun, sometimes, imagining God “mooning” Moses. But fun aside, I hear a profound truth in this vignette. We can only see God’s back because God is always out ahead of us.

            God does not command from the safety of an HQ somewhere far behind the front lines. God is the front lines.

            God does not push buttons and pull levers that set up the cogs and wheels of mills that will grind exceeding fine. God does not write program codes that will determine how we humans will respond to emergencies.

             Because God is already ahead of us, God never tells us to hit the “Rewind” button, to go back to the organizations we used to have, the songs we used to sing, the prayers we used to say. God never wants us to “undo” our learning and our experience.

            We may recognize our encounters with God in our rearview mirrors. But that was then; this is now. We learn from those encounters, so that we can look for God ahead of us, calling us onward to new ways of thinking, seeing, and doing things.

*****************************************

Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

            To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

*****************************************

YOUR TURN

Last week’s column about how images can linger in our senses, even after the light has gone out or the honey swallowed, was prompted partly by a couple of deaths among readers’ relatives.

The metaphor of the singing bowl reminded Tom Watson of the old question about a tree falling in the forest. Does its sound depend on someone hearing it? Or is the sound independent of the hearer? “I know very little about Quantum Theory,” Tom wrote, “but it suggests that if there's no device to measure the sound of the tree falling, there is no sound at all. Albert Einstein came down somewhere in the middle when he opined, ‘Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one’.”

Jim Henderschedt commented, “Great article; very profound; it even enters the realm of the mystic(al). I will probably be thinking about it all day long.”

            Isabel Gibson called it “a lovely piece.”

A writer who preferred to remain anonymous sent this: “I think it is different for everyone – when do we decide anything is over and move on to the next thing? Personally, I don’t think anything ever really ends; we just change our focus to something else that has come into our awareness. I also believe life goes on far beyond the grave, as if the loved one is in the next room and we just can’t see them. Do we still feel their presence?  Yes! Do we often hear their voice in our mind?  Yes!  Do we sometimes even feel that warm embrace -- definitely! I have the amazing gift of mediumship and often have interactions with those who have passed, so for me it is all very real, but it does change depending on what I focus on.”

            In his funeral/memorial/celebration services, my minister Jim Hannah often says, “Death ends a life, but it doesn’t end a relationship.”

Don Schau endorsed most of the comments above, but then went on, “As you pondered our inability to know when life truly begins, you made an assertion about our knowledge of death. I wonder if we really know when death occurs or if we simply know when we can stop detecting life.  I often feel connected to those who have passed away and the familiar hug you experienced is, to me, the still present life of your mother. Hugs are often unique. You will know the difference between your mother’s hug and another one. Only you will have made the connection.”

*******************************************

PSALM PARAPHRASES

Something about Psalm 90 made me think of going camping in my younger days.

1          Your lantern hangs before our tent.

2          Its circle of light illuminates this brief stopping place.
We do not know where we are going;
We barely know where we have been.
We keep our hats handy, always ready to move on.

3          Perhaps the next campsite will be like this one;
perhaps it will not.
Only you have an overview of our journey.

4          We are here such a short time.
We arrive, we unpack, we explore our environment,
And then we are gone again.

5          May the good earth be not harmed by our passage.
May we be no more dangerous to our planet than a dream

6          that flits across the mind and leaves no mark.
Like a firefly, bright and brief, we flicker against the darkness,
and then vanish into your warm and holy night.

13        Do not leave us alone in the darkness. Holy One.

14        Light up our days with love,
and let us frolic in the sunshine of your smile.

15        Make our summers as long when we were children;
make the winter nights as brief as a memory.

16        Let us see your inner nature;
lead us into the warm circle of your arms.

17        Be good to us; shape our attitudes as a potter forms clay.
Help us become what you envisioned, when you first thought of us.

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

*******************************************

TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.

            To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to jimt@quixotic.ca. Or you can subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message or subject line) to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at softedges-unsubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca.

            I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

            I’m leaving out some of the links to other blogs and pages, to see if those links have caused the recent blockages, preventing some of your from receiving the columns at all, and preventing others from sending responses. We’ll see.

********************************************

We’re still trying to figure out how to include links to other recommended websites – for Ralph Milton, Tom Watson, Isabel Gibson, and Wayne Irwin, for example – without triggering the “blocking” codes that prevented many of you from writing to me a couple of weeks ago.