Promises for the simple life
He will give rain for the seed that you sow in the ground, and the wheat that the soil produces will be rich and abundant. On that day your flock will be given pasture and the lamb will graze in spacious meadows;
The oxen and the asses that till the ground will eat silage tossed to them with shovel and pitchfork.
– From Isaiah 30
I lived in New York City, on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village with Sam, my Valpo college roommate. Sam was a professional grip on movie sets. In his spare time he took photos (with Plus X black and white film) of the water towers that rose above building after building in south Manhattan.
Those pictures took time to develop. He didn’t see his pictures for days. Often they needed exposure or contrast or cropping work. Didn’t matter. He loved them. And even more, he loved the expeditions. “Goin’ out to take some pictures. Back in a couple of hours.”
We had it in mind to make movies ourselves, but a few days before I arrived at his fourth floor walkup apartment, his movie equipment was stolen. Bad day for Sam. So we didn’t make our movies. I found a job typesetting at night a few blocks away, working with students from Fordham and NYU on their daily campus newspapers.
My friend did the layout and I did the typesetting. Often in the morning we went to the movies. At least once we went to a triple feature at Radio City Music Hall and watched the Rockettes on stage above us at …. what … 10 o’clock in the morning? They were wonderful, of course. Kicking up a storm.
* * *
Manhattan no longer has room for farmland. Thousands and thousands of people live on each square mile. Sam stayed, but I did not. After several months I returned to Indiana and eventually, Illinois. The black earth beckoned.
Now years later, I confess imagining the collapse of our technologies, and admit that I find the picture pleasing. It sounds idyllic, to simply live and breathe and eat and sleep, see every sunrise and sunset, live without a clock.
But of course it’s never been so simple, not since we left the Garden. Instead we have toiled and sweat, shed blood and tears, endured the pain of childbirth. We have gotten in each other’s way, and resented it. We have become selfish, and we are afraid. I guess we are as far from Eden now as we have ever been.
I imagine a world without technology while daily indulging in it. Like most of us, I spend a lot of time each day on my phone. I drive through the black earth country to visit Mom on our family farm, and as I give myself a little space, I begin to live and breathe more quietly.
But I don’t stay long. Last week I found Margaret’s old cracked iPad and restored it. Restoration! Yes, that’s what they call it. So I can play now on yet another screen.
* * *
I wonder where it is that you live. And if that’s where you want to be.
I am glad for these restorative, hopeful, farm-fed passages in Isaiah. For the Hebrews their God-breathed life of plenty always eluded them, slipped back and forth between the idealized past and the hoped-for-not-yet-future. It seems the same for me.
No matter. Dwelling in these prophetic images of our return to Eden, it is easier to worship and simpler to live with joy. My complaints don’t take hold, and my sadness falls away. As I say more and more these days, there is no hurry.
Lord, thank you for forgiving me my contradictions. Work inside me, release your energy in me, show me where to act in your world as co-creator, while you make all things new.
https://www.davesandel.net/category/advent-and-christmas-devotions-2019/
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archive.php?year=2019
