Vereshchagin, Prayer of Hannah (1864)
Spiritual Sunday
Dan Clendenin, who monitors the indispensable webzine Journey with Jesus, features a poem in the latest issue that can help us heal from our bruising elections. Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai first warns us what happens when we fall in love with our own self-righteousness and then shows us a way forward:
The Place Where We Are Right
By Yehuda Amichai
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
In our righteous indignation we stomp the ground and harden our hearts. On the other hand, when we acknowledge our doubts and honor our loves, movement occurs. To hear the whispers, refrain from shouting.
What is the ruined house? Perhaps it is Jerusalem’s temple, which (so Jesus predicted in today’s Gospel reading) the Romans would demolish so that not one stone would be left upon another (Mark 13:1-2). I think also of Abraham Lincoln quoting Jesus (Matthew 12:15) that a house divided against itself cannot stand. America at the moment is more polarized than perhaps any time since the Civil War, and those who shout and trample will not bring us together.
Amichai’s poem also fits well with today’s Old Testament reading, which is about Hannah mourning her childlessness. The prophet Eli finds her praying for a son but, because she is not speaking aloud, he thinks she is drunk. He must listen to hear what she is really saying:
No, my lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time.
Eli blesses her and Hannah goes on to give birth to Samuel, one of Israel’s greatest prophets. If we listen carefully to others and let God guide us, flowers will bloom again. We can rebuild the house.