image by Anne Cameron

1. What lengths are you willing to go, or in the parlance of our passage, “How much ‘gold’ are you will willing to pay” to compensate for your lack? 

I gravitate to affection and esteem. I think the lengths I am willing to go often include mediating and seeing two sides of anything, wanting experiences to only be lighthearted and fun so I add the energy and humour where I can and of course reveling in the likes and shares on social media. It is a bottomless pit that can never be filled.  My prayers have changed to mindfulness and contemplation to hear that internal Voice of the spirit calling me the beloved. But my old ways are deep rooted and for sure my quick "go to’s".

- Mel

I was thinking about those three verbs that Isaiah uses to describe what Yahweh is willing and able to do for his people: bearing, carrying and saving. Those same verbs are then used in a kind of playful mockery of idols who themselves need to be borne, carried and saved. It is with further irony that that which spins off from the worship of these dependent, powerless and inert gods actually sustains the life of the Babylonian people in the form of very visual and public ritual celebration and cultic practice. Meanwhile the "God who hides himself" (from ch. 45)  asks his people to trust their undependable memory - "Remember the old days. For I am God; there is no other.” Or just as ambiguously, to put hope in the future - “My intentions will come to pass, I will make things happen as I determine they should.” 

It's funny that the word "faith" in the religion I grew up with meant the exact opposite of what it really means. Beliefs and doctrines were the wobbly idols that never could bear, carry or save me, but could be trotted out and dusted off when religious protocol demanded it. Faith like this is rife with anxiety because any bit of science or critical thinking could knock the poor idols off the donkey cart. 

I think I gravitate towards the "power/control" patterning. I grew up in a pretty chaotic and competitive (but happy) family where we had little personal space or boundaries. Early on I learned that I could carve out my own place and personhood through mastery of a skill, like drawing or playing an instrument for example, and it became a place of contentment, but also of isolation. While this pattern of control could bear me for a while, could carry me through adolescence, or even "save me" from despair, it is not trust in a God who will love me in my imperfection and incompleteness. 

Thankfully, and sometimes fretfully, these idols of mine have been slipping off the donkey cart for many years now and I am learning to lean into the God of memory and hope. 

- Eldon

My tendency toward obtaining Survival & Security likely goes back to my very conception and birth. As you know my family of origin was not the most stable one. My young parents were likely not ready to take on the task of child care. As a result they formed a very inconsistent form of nurture. Being an only child I was expected to be the best kid around like most only kids, and also was pegged very early as a black sheep. Both archetypes clung to me throughout my year in the family. Back and forth from hero to failure in short order. Not the best conditions for deriving a consistent identity. But even more significant was my pre-birth and birth where my welcome was severely in doubt. I was a scrawny little gaffer born at 4lbs. 3oz.

Once in therapy at about age 30, I re-experienced the conditions. My initial sense was that I was severely cramped in a cold steel container. My imagination allowed me to feel like one of those experimental monkeys who were thrust on a artificial monkey mother make of wire and fur. This made sense since I was placed in an incubator for quite a while due to my small size. Regardless of the accuracy of the effects of these life-saving constraints, this may have been why it became a foundational image for me. I came to confuse sustenance with receiving artificially increased amounts of food, thus I was always to confuse food for security. The results of this are obvious to this day. A secondary suggestive image was that of constraint, the desire to either remain in one spot or to break out of all constraints. There’s the rebel in me. Up and down, here we go again! .

What am I willing to pay to maintain my significance and security? As for security, the main factor is the security of being authentic, true to my values and sincere. If I can maintain my true self rather than fold to the expectations of peers or society; I feel a sense of assurance. When untrue to myself I become unsure of my identity and prone to enter the swings of self defeating behavior. I have paid the price of social shame in the pursuit of significance and security - I am safe when I am authentic, in danger when conforming. One deep concern I have had concerns my over sensitivity not so much to how people view me behaviorally as to how they calculate my integrity and motivations. I have to definitely watch out for hyper-vigilance and misreading the intentions of others. It took grace to substantially heal these tendencies.

- Paul

2. In the modern age, what does it mean to no longer carry our load but rather to accept that we are “carried and saved?”

The other day I remembered a favourite page from the World Book Childcraft Encyclopedic books. The one I liked a lot was volume 11, “Make and Do.” The page I remembered when thinking of these questions was how to make a tractor spool. Using an empty thread spool, nail, rubber band and a matchstick you can make this wind-up toy. When you twist the stick around the rubber band and put the spool down on the carpet, it just keeps on going. It fascinated me because it was so simple but also so persistent. It would try to go over many obstacles you put in its path. I loved these little tractors and would even name them, as children do with their favourite toys. You can probably see the appeal for a budding Capricorn. It was the perfect symbol of cardinal energy...for someone who still likes to “make and do”. 

Recently I’ve been thinking more about aging and what the next decades might hold for me and those I love. What will it mean when I can’t make or do as much? How will I be able to consent to the inevitable process of letting go of what was a source of satisfaction and even joy? The little tractor will get tired, the elastic will crack, the obstacles will become insurmountable. I have taken my body and energy for granted. I don’t think God expects me to castigate either because they are not ultimate. But I think back to how as a kid I loved my toys. Some of them got a lot of wear and tear and became pretty “velveteen rabbity” but it didn’t change how I felt about them. Then I imagine how God sees us get threadbare and worn down. He remembers how he “knit us together” from two tiny cells, how he has been with us even when we forgot about Him.   

When I then read verse 4, I was strangely comforted. God is not utilitarian, is not transactional. He relates to us in all our stages. And shares in both our joys and our sorrows. Even after I can’t make and do, when my hair will be thoroughly grey, I will still be cherished, I will still be carried. My identity is not in these things but is carried by such a God. Somehow I felt answered. 

- Linda

A recent example came to mind with this question. During the pandemic, I’ve had a greater sense of focus and urgency in wanting to complete the meaningful tasks given me, like writing and calligraphy. I’ve been grateful for this focus and energy, but have also noticed my “gotta get ‘er done” attitude can make me impatient and not restful in my approach. 

I especially notice it when I go to do my 45-minute yoga practice, where I have to slow right down and just rest in the different postures. At the beginning I often have an extreme sense of impatience as the meditative practice feels like a waste of time. The only antidote to my impatience has been to breathe slowly. All I really have is my breath and this present moment. When I begin to breathe deeply, my sense of impatience invariably lifts, and the urgency of tasks leaves me.

This to me is a reminder that I am not the one carrying my tasks. They’re God’s tasks, and I’m the one being carried in them. The images from this week’s passage are so evocative in helping me picture this! "It is you, not I, who have been carried from before you were born.” One of the memorable wisdom quotes from 2020 for me, which I have written on a sticky note beside me, is “Leave some work for the Lord."

- Lydia

"Indeed, when you were still in the womb, I was taking care of you."

This verse reminds me of being formed in the context of our Watershed community. God has been present through the gifts of different people; a way of caring for her people.  

"And when you are old, I will still be there, carrying you.
When your limbs grow tired, your eyes are weak,
And your hair a silvery gray,
I will carry you as I always have.
I will carry you and save you."

And God's faithfulness continues, incarnated in different ways.  We can always trust God's presence, mediated through her people.

- Marilyn

3. Using an example from history, can you detect an ancient or modern pattern of deliverance that mirrors Israel’s theological understanding of liberation?

The other night I watched Stephen Colbert’s interview with American politician Stacey Abrams. I was really struck with her demeanor. She seemed very grounded and not easily swayed by hype and she had a wry sense of humour. Like she wasn’t about to forget her purpose. Her work in the recent run-off elections seemed to reflect that. Even though she lost in her bid for governor, she kept working to organize for the general and then the run-off election. She was part of (created?) a group that raised money for the two Dem candidates, and helped people to register and then to get out and vote, in a very hostile climate. Her fundraising made a surplus that they shared with other campaigns. There were record numbers of young and black voters during the run-off election that ended up placing the two Dem candidates in the senate, tipping the majority in the Dem’s favour. 

I thought about Stacy, working tirelessly even though she didn’t win her own election campaign. As an African American woman with a political station I can just imagine the hurdles she has had to overcome. And she probably has the scars to show for it. But what struck me was her “keep on working at it” demeanor on Stephen Colbert. She seemed to embody that quote from MLK: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I don’t know her faith story but she seemed to embody God’s desire to enter history with justice and compassion in spite of evidence to the contrary. There are other Stacey Abrams out there.  

- Linda

I guess I must be in the process of working through my old God images because every time I answer these Isaiah study questions, I find that I am struggling with the way the prophet is depicting God. I have a hard time making the same theological interpretation of history as the prophet. I would be very hesitant, for instance, to talk about the Holocaust as a judgement of the Jewish people unless we said it was a judgement on all human kind and our propensity to treat others as less than fully human. 

But I still think that God is involved in our historical lives, maybe just not in a way we can easily interpret. Martin Luther King said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I think this means that God does desire to shape history and move humanity toward greater and greater love but that this project is going to take a long time. 

In author Richard Beck’s blog (Experimental Theology) last week he had an interesting section on how God is involved in our mental health.  I think it presents an interesting analogy to how God is involved in the process of history.  Beck talks about the fact that God is His own relation to the world and that we cannot assume that God acts in the world the way we would. “God differs, differently,” says Henk J.M. Shoot. This means that God is not in a competitive or rivalrous relationship to us and acts in a freedom that is beyond even what we can imagine. 

I know that this may sound a bit abstract but when I read it it gave me a lot of hope. Just that phrase “God differs differently” is a good koan to ponder. Beck says it better than me: 

“God is making every difference to your mental and physical well-being. God is present to and actively sustaining every last bit of you, across every spiritual, psychological, and physical register. God is, as Augustine puts it, closer to you than you are to yourself--always there, always sustaining, always supporting, always empowering. Just not in a way you or I can understand or describe.

 Another way to say this is that this connection between God and myself is primarily in an apophatic register--it cannot be described or verbally specified. The difference God makes to me and my mental health defies any clear conceptual modeling or therapeutic understanding. Since this connection is with God it will always be and remain an explanatory mystery in my life, resistant to any psychological or therapeutic specification. As Kathryn Tanner observes in her book Christ the Key, there is "something incomprehensible about human nature as it is shaped by a relationship with God.”

I get a good glimpse of how God acts in Jesus, and that helps me understand God’s character. It’s this idea that God is very active in history but in a way that remains a mystery, in a way that I can not understand or describe that I find so freeing. It frees me from saying God is in all the good stuff and none of the bad to saying God is in all of history but as Mystery.

- Cal

4. How do you square the ambiguity of history with the surety of God’s promise? Does it give you hope (or not) in our present turbulent times?

I believe God cares deeply about our lives and the choices we make, but I don't think that he "causes" things to happen. I have seen in history and in my own experience that everything that happens, good or bad, is an opportunity to choose the self-sacrificial and life-giving path of Christ. 

In reading this passage, I couldn't help but smile at the words, "Bel and Nebo wobble and duck, as their images sway on the backs of oxen and donkeys". I thought of the elephant and donkey in the States, the political parties that buckle under the weight of the unrealistic hopes of salvation that people put on them. This is an exaggerated image of what happens to us on a personal and community level if our hopes are placed in other people, our own strength, or man-made institutions instead of God. As I age, and come face to face with my own flawed legacy and weaknesses both physical and spiritual, I am more and more convinced that our hope lies not in any specific historical outcome, but in the accompaniment of Christ in all situations. Learning to trust in this way is really a lifetime (and maybe longer) curriculum.

- Penny

As others have noted, the dualism in this ancient text is troubling and potentially dangerous. Israel’s god is active, passionate and liberating. Babylon’s gods are passive, wobbly and ineffectual. Isn’t God involved in all of history and in all peoples? (We are moderns so have learned this more-so than ancients.) But given the historical context of a small, oppressed ethnic group being exiled within a larger, more powerful empire, is this really surprising? Oppressed minorities are often more dynamic and self-reflective due to the suffering they’ve endured. They are the ones who have been doing the soul-searching, and have come up with the more profound gems: the wisdom of endurance, perseverance, a relationship with God (or another name of a Higher Power) who is with us through the darkest times, etc. Often don’t we too side with the minority opinion, the oppressed minority? Everybody loves an underdog. (Watershed is a good example of an underdog making what we usually think is good.) Are not the best mythic stories involve the unlikely hero who rises out of nothing to be a somebody?

So in the middle of this dualistic text we need to dig deeper if we’re going to learn something from it other than ‘either/or’. Us good, them bad. Perhaps Brueggemann hits it on the nail when he says this: “It is remarkable to notice that Yahweh’s passionate and powerful assurance to Israel in exile takes into full account the inadequacy and failure of Israel. But Yahweh’s resolve is not thereby diminished. It is for this inadequate, failed people that this active, resolved, passionate God will now make a difference. The difference is rooted in Yahweh’s readiness to move past transgression in fidelity, thus relying on the assertion of forgiveness with which Isaiah in exile has begun.” Putting the overall dualism problem aside, the persuasive appeal of Yahweh is that this God is recognized as not one-sided or myopic but ever knowing yet forgiving, but also challenging, empowering and liberating. And One who doesn’t ever forget those (everyone really!) God has always loved. This self-giving God who has incarnated God-self in our reality is the one I want to know. The One who loves us and identifies us, despite our so glaring inadequacies and hypocrisies.

- Lyle

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