The Wonderment

Bearing Memories

Chapter 5, Book of Joshua

One of the ways we know something is really important, that we really need to pay attention to in the library called the Bible, is that themes are repeated, rather like in Hebrew poetry. This repetition lays down neural tracks in our brain, so that we might remember what is very important: these phrases and stories are physical inscriptions we carry in us. Just as repeating the multiplication tables or the periodic table or the alphabet might inscribe keys of understanding and shape us into persons who can inhabit the land of quadratic equations and chemistry and poetry, these formative stories and phrases that are repeated in the Bible are supposed to shape us into beings who can inhabit the land humbly, and with mercy and justice, with the Beloved.

So we should not be surprised that the fifth chapter of Joshua is both a repetition of the previous two chapters, and also of significant events in the history of the Israelites. The repetition of the story, though, has some important differences and information for us, rich with symbolism, if we can remember the reasons for the stories. The transmitters of the Book of Joshua have written an editorial of a sorts for us, one with which we, the readers and hearers of the story in each generation, can wrestle, because this is a foundational narrative editorial. Foundational narratives are stories that say: we are this kind of people for these reasons, and we do these things that define us a people for these reasons. Understanding that, we can see why:

•  It is Passover when they cross over the Jordan. Literally, there is a return full circle out of Egypt into home.
• Manna ceases; the Israelites no longer need the Beloved to provide food in the wilderness for them: now they can forage in the pantry stocked at home, by the Canaanites.
•  Every man has to be circumcised, to remember the covenant of Abraham, and physically bear the mark of transformation from slave and desert wanderer to home- and kingdom- makers.

But the editorial information is in the reminders that the adults who left Egypt as slaves still had to perish in the desert, (here’s the editorial) because they had not been able to live according to the law (echo: be strong and very courageous). The time in Egypt as slaves is understood (again, editorial), as disgrace, punishment. But now, they’re restored, right as rain, and as a sign of that, Joshua is even able to recognize he is standing on holy ground.

There’s some wonderful truths in this chapter. When we are in the wilderness periods of our lives, we don’t have a spiritual larder – and often, a physical one – to make sure we are fed. But when we do encounter food and water – wild foods and pure water – we eat and drink with great gratitude and zest, because we have been hungry and afraid. Hunger is one thing. Adding fear to hunger – about the next meal, continuing strength, vulnerability, adequacy – and we see human beings who are frequently in spiritual trouble. But once we are out of the wilderness, we must learn again to find and support ourselves in some rather different ways than the catch as catch can life of the wilderness. We have to learn another kind of discipline. That is what the Israelites are learning in this chapter, and they seal that physically by (1) having the Seder and remembering the Passover, and (2) demonstrating their commitment to the covenant with the Beloved through mass circumcision: through inscribing outwardly their devotion and their transformation.

A great many people who undergo traumatic and wilderness experiences physically alter themselves as they enter domestic life again: new hair styles or colors, new piercings or tattoos or scarifications, new wardrobes. There is a basic human need we have, when we come through a transformative experience, to mark that transformation on ourselves physically. It is a way of closing the door on a harrowing time, of setting apart that other journey. It is also a way of remembering, of bearing memory upon our personhood.

As you consider your life and those of the people you know, what are some of the ways transformational experiences are marked, honored, and remembered? How does this story in Joshua speak to you? What resonates? What seems frightening? Why?

Memory Stones

The third chapter of the Book of Joshua calls us to remember our origin stories: who we are and, consequently, whose we are. The fourth chapter reflects the need we human beings have to make symbols for those stories: visual and tangible connections to the stories of who and whose we are.

Great stories interconnect with one another, deepening each the meaning of all those connected stories. The Book of Joshua, which concludes the desert time and is the first book to follow the Five Books of Moses, is about finding, creating, and claiming a place in the world. No longer are the people dispossessed wanderers or slaves. They are coming home and creating home simultaneously. They have accumulated about all the goods a nomadic people can have, including a couple of enormous stone tablets with the basic code of conduct, and a lot of special celebratory gear.

Carrying all that gear around the desert was a tangible reminder of whose they were; creating home, each of the twelve houses of Israel select a cornerstone of memory to establish in Gilgal. These stones are a symbol – a visible and tangible connection to the story they are living about who and whose they are – a reminder that not only did once they cross the Red Sea on dry land, but they similarly crossed the Jordan. This remembering is supposed to move the people to gratitude and to awe, for something amazing and wonderful is accomplished in these crossings, and in their movement from slave to free, nomad to householder.

The Israelites have accumulated twenty-eight touchstones that tell important stories: two are the tablets of the law; two are on the shoulder plates of the priests, remembering the sons of Israel; twelve on the priestly breastplate of judgment, to name the character of the twelve tribes; twelve remember the crossing into home – foundation stones. Over the course of future books in this great library of the Bible, we will encounter touchstones repeatedly; the image of the being living stones and the rejected cornerstone become very important in the Christian Scriptures.  In English, we even use the phrase for describing transitory things, the opposite of history, ephemera: it isn’t written in stone.

James Luther Adams, a Unitarian Universalist theologian and ethicist of the Twentieth Century, followed the recurrent imagery of touchstones, naming five smooth stones for religious liberals in his essay, “Guiding Principles for a Free Faith” (On Being Human Religiously, James Luther Adams, ed. by Max L. Stackhouse, pp 12-20). The five smooth stones of religious liberal remembering are:

1. Revelation is continuous. The story is not finished.
2. Human relations must be mutual and free, and not coerced. We are all fallible, and we are also moral. Creating free societies is part of our moral calling.
3. We have a moral obligation to create a just and loving community.
4. We create institutions and channel power to create just and loving communities; this is how we connect to history.
5. Ultimate optimism in divine and human keeps religious liberals going, since we cannot always look to the contemporary situation in which much that is unjust and unloving may be happening.

The fourth chapter of the Book of Joshua sees the Israelites gathering twelve more stones, to connect them back to this story of homecoming.  James Luther Adams offered five smooth stones to create a homecoming for religious liberals in a century filled with fascism, genocide, torture, colonial dispossession, wars, famine, poverty, domestic violence, and governmental betrayals. But he was reminding his readers that there is another aspect to our calling beyond all that immediate story of human misuse of power. The Twentieth Century also saw the widespread use of organized and effective nonviolent protest, an articulation in conventions and treaties of human rights and moral goods around the world, the development of the environmental protection movement, and work to empower people on local levels to live good lives that matter in communities of love and justice. Which story we remember, which stories we tell, which stones we touch in our daily meditations, remind of us of who we are, whose we are, and who we are becoming.

What touchstones do you have? What are the stories that you tell through them?

Stories We Tell: Crossings & Remembering

The Book of Joshua is the first of the historical books, the first book in the library to follow the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). As the exodus from Egypt started with purification and crossing a great sea, so the homecoming of Joshua – the exodus from the wilderness – requires purification and crossing the floodwaters of the Jordan. That is what we find in the third chapter of the Book of Joshua.

Joshua, like Moses, receives his instructions. He, in turn, elaborates those instructions to the Israelites, telling them to purify and sanctify themselves. They had to make haste to leave Egypt, and here, on departing the wilderness sojourn, the people are instructed to prepare themselves overnight for a similar final journey. In the wilderness, the people have become organized, and the priests dedicated, the law received, and the Ark of the Covenant created to be the visible symbol of that Covenant to the people. Symbolically, the wilderness is bound by the Red Sea on one side and, on the other side, the Jordan River. The rushing floodwaters of the Jordan are terrifying to a people who do not remember their Covenant. Have courage and strength. Joshua and the priests step into the floodwaters, and the waters part, making a dry space for the Israelites to depart the wilderness and symbolically cross out of exile and back into home.

Rituals of transformation and change, like the passage through the parted waters of the Jordan – foreshadowed by Rahab in the second chapter – remind us of important events and stopping points in our own life journeys. When we are born, we are given a name, and throughout the rituals of transformation we observe in our lives, our name will be called out, often changed. The people of Israel are experiencing the same reminder of who they are: once they were brought in fear and grief to the edge of the Red Sea and a way was created for them. Once they came to the edge of the floodwaters of the Jordan and a way was created for them. We need to remember who we are and that means remembering where we came from and how we came to here and now.

That kind of remembering is very humbling. None of us becomes the person we are on our own. There are always teachers, parents, friends, and strangers with whom we interact, and in those interactions, are changed. There is a myth of self-reliance that posits the individual person is who he is because of his will and determination and abilities. That myth of the individual is set aside when we engage the kind of remembering we must at these thresholds of life: birth, coming of age, graduations, holy union, vows of vocation, parenthood, grandparenthood, unemployment, retirement, and death. There are other major life events, of course, and different religious traditions will recognize differing ages and stages and transformations. When we pause for sanctification, as Joshua tells the people to do in the NRSV (3:5), we are pausing to set aside our selves and our purpose for making holy, for reverencing. The gate of this sanctification is remembering who we are, and, by doing so, whose we are.

The meaning making that we human beings do results in a multitude of stories claiming our attention. Which ones we celebrate and retell imbue our lives with particular focus and purpose. If we tell, over and over, the story of the self-made woman, who through grit and determination pulls herself up by her designer hosiery, we are telling a story that cuts that woman off from the rest of life’s gifts, from gratitude, and from her capacity to acknowledge her connections to this web of life of which each of us is just one part. If we tell, over and over, the story that once we were slaves and strangers, and dependent upon awe and amazement and all that is Sacred for opportunities like crossing the floodwaters of the Jordan safely, then we are telling stories about connections, obligations, gratitude, reverence, and wonder. The third chapter of the Book of Joshua is a retelling of the Exodus and the Covenant as the route home. The historical books -- often ignored by religious liberals -- are filled with important stories, such as embarking on a homecoming in a strange land. What are the stories of your life, the patterns in them you tell, and why do they matter?