I will make a way through the wilderness, rivers in the desert.
Is 43:19
Lately, the words endurance and resilience have been on my mind. As I have pondered these words and their relationship to our spiritual lives, I have imagined them in a kind of dance with one another. They both describe resources we need to sustain the journey of faith. In one way they are synonyms. They both speak of sustained dedication and perseverance. Yet in another way they are almost antonyms in that one speaks to something we do and the other speaks to something we are. Endurance is about an active exertion of our energy. Resilience is a state we settle into but do not necessarily create.
It's kind of like the difference between swimming and floating. It’s the interplay between pursuing a goal and being carried toward a destination. What’s more, whether we think of ourselves as swimming or floating, when we are in the water, we are always doing a bit of both. We are always buoyed up by the water and always moving our arms and legs (sometimes gently and sometimes vigorously) so that we can take a breath and see our destination.
It's also like the difference between singing and listening to a song. To sing requires breath and exertion. We are participating in and cooperating with the work of a composer and an accompanist. We are adding our voice to other voices, listening to what is happening around us and contributing to the making of melody and harmony. But we are also surrounded by something that would sound whether we contributed to it or not. The song carries us, buoys us up, lifts us to heights we would not scale if it were not sounding.
Both of these metaphors come together in the title I have chosen for this essay, “One Long River of Song.” This title is not my creation. It is the title of a collection of posthumously published essays by Brian Doyle. Maybe this title is the creation of David James Duncan who helped to assemble these essays in the wake of his friend’s death. But whatever its source, it is a very apt description of this interplay between endurance and resilience, swimming and floating, singing and listening, striving and resting that characterizes the spiritual life. The journey of faith is like the navigation of “one long river of song.”
Throughout my years in pastoral ministry, I have come to experience Isaiah 40-55 as one long river of song. It is a series of songs the prophet gave to a defeated and exiled people who are on the verge of repatriation. These songs seamlessly and fluidly move back and forth between a call to action and an invitation to rest. Through these songs the Prophet invites his people to breathe in the air of God’s comfort and mercy and to float in the living water of grace. But he also commands them to rouse themselves out of the stupor of a grievous captivity and to put on traveling clothes as they prepare to embark on a difficult journey towards home. This road that they will travel will once again take them through a wilderness, yet there they will also discover rivers of living water.
Beginning in Advent and continuing through my last Sunday in the pulpit at Emmanuel on February 11, we’ll be swimming in and floating on this one long river of song in Isaiah 40-55. My prayer is that this exploration will both buoy us up and equip us for action. The Way of Jesus is a gentle way that is about abiding in him and simply enjoying his presence, but it is also difficult way that demands tenacity and endurance. Yet either way the journey is always accompanied by a song. It’s a song that has been sounding since before the foundation of the world, a song that sang creation into existence. Yet it is also a song that is new every morning and will sustain us for eternity. It’s the song of God’s faithfulness and mercy and thus the source of what empowers us to respond in kind.
David Rohrer
11/28/2023