Bound for the Promised Land
This might be the wrong time for this post, but I write what’s in my heart, and this is what is there today.
For a long time, I’ve been moderately obsessed with the concept of the promised land. No, not in a geographical sense — I’ve never really been anywhere I didn’t think was cool — but in the metaphorical sense, the spiritual sense. What I’ve been interested in was not the promised land itself, but the difficulty humans have in getting there.
There are always difficulties in travel, of course, but that’s not what interests me. What I find fascinating is how hard it is to get people to GO.
This is universal, I think. We get our lives in places that we like, that we think we want to keep, and it’s natural to want to stay in those places. But humans ALSO want to stay in places where things are awful — take the Israelites in Egypt, for instance — because the unknown is so terrifying that even squalid conditions, abusive conditions, painful conditions have a degree of familiarity. The promised land? Sounds good…but I can’t go YET. It’s not a good time. Things are looking up here. We’re starting to make something of this place.
We lie to ourselves, because we are afraid. And I say “we”, but really I mean “I”, because I know so many of you that have been willing to strike out into the wilderness seemingly without a backward glance. How I envy that in you, and wish I were more like that.
Then along comes COVID.
I get a lot of financial analysis emails, artifacts from when I was a mortgage guy, and they’ve proved helpful to me many times in making decisions. This time, I read through them and I think, “No one knows what the hell is happening, do they?” $4 trillion deficits. Flatlining of whole industries. 20% unemployment. Governmental and social reaction beyond even the realms of fantasy. No one knows what’s coming next, what fresh shock will roll through today.
Everyone, though, agrees that the old safe harbors are gone. Whatever you thought the future was going to hold, financially, economically, you were wrong. We all were. No one has any models to show what happens in cases like this because there have never been any cases like this. Not even the most fantastical models are working at all. It is science fiction as evolving fact.
I’m afraid, like everyone. But I find that, as often happens, my study of something weird and esoteric comes to my unexpected rescue. In this case, my study of the promised land.
In a book I love one of the leaders is faced with a cataclysm that means he and his entire community have to leave, and right now. He is distraught over this. How can they leave? Where will they go? His brother comes to him, though, and says, essentially, think of it this way — maybe God will lead us someplace better. One thing I know, though, we must face this crisis with faith, so that we can be worthy of the better thing.
And that is in my heart this morning. I had plans. A good part of those are dust and ashes. I have absolutely no idea what is coming. But I have faith. I have a community of family and friends that is deep and wide, caring and committed, powerful and resilient. My hard-won harbor may be gone, but my ship is mighty, and there still remains the open sea.
Maybe the hardest thing for an individual, a community, a city, a nation to do is to let go of what was and confidently move toward what could be. I believe that is our choice today. In a sense, it’s been made easier for us by the obliteration of so much that we relied on for so long. But there remains the danger that we will cling to its urn long after the ashes are cold.
Much better not. You have wild ideas? Well, these are wild times. Look beyond the horizon. Who knows what awaits us there? Hey man, we’re about to jump on that ginormous spaceship (whether we like it or not).
Wanna come?
