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Karen Hollis | Nov 3, 2024 - All Saints/Souls
Revelation 21:1-6a Indigenous Translation
Then I saw a new spirit-world above and a new earth below, for the first spirit-world and the first earth had gone away, and the great waters of the sea were no longer there. I saw a new Sacred Village of Peace, coming down from the Great Spirit in the world above and dressed in wedding regalia, like a bride made ready for her husband. I heard a voice coming from the seat of honour. “Behold,” the voice said, “the Great Spirit has pitched his sacred tent among human beings. They will be his people, and Creator himself will make his home among them and will be their Great Spirit. He will perform a wiping of tears ceremony, for death will be no more. There will be no sorrow, or weeping, or pain, because these former things have faded away”.
Then the one on the seat of honour spoke again. “Behold,” he said, “I am making all things fresh and new.” Then he added, “Write these words down, for they are true and trustworthy.”
“It is done!” he said to me. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
The year we lived in East Vancouver, the month of January was so cold that Trout Lake froze for the first time in recent memory. While people flocked there from all over the city, we were lucky enough to live across the street. We had walked around the lake dozens of times in all weather conditions, hung our feet over docks with ice cream cones in hand, inspected Lilli pads, but never imagined being Jesus-like and walking on the surface. The frozen conditions provided a rare and sacred opportunity to occupy a space we had never been. Knowing we could avoid the crowds in the wee hours of the morning, our border collie, Joy, and I walked over at dawn. We stepped onto the ice and entered another world. The sky had a periwinkle glow, and I could still make out morning stars. Frost covered everything we could see, and every bit of it proclaimed the coming light. The morning was perfectly still: no birds, no voices, just this glowing space that had been opened to us. All I could think of was the line in Revelation that describes the throne room of God as “something like a sea of glass, like crystal.”1 It was like multiple realms existed in the space, like heaven and earth had joined hands and welcomed us in. The frozen world opened me to the union of divine presence with what we call ordinary spaces . . . if there really are such things.
John’s vision affirms this union. The story of separation and disconnection lost and left behind, worlds merge, and we see everything made new as the holy emanates through all things. Everyone and everything is exposed to the presence of the Holy and therefore, transformed in healing.
Queer Bible Study has been studying a text called The Thunder: Perfect Mind. It is a profound and puzzling text. Every line transports the reader to a new thought or emotion. The text itself is modeled after aretology, or narratives that describe the attributes of divine figures. These narratives can be found in ancient writings about goddesses like Isis, as well as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew tradition. While the attributes of the divine feminine or wisdom in these texts are consistently aligned with power, justice, light, gold, and all that is positive and desirable . . . the voice of Thunder is different. Using “I AM,” the divine name God first spoke from the burning bush – “I am who I am,” God said to Moses – using the divine name, the holy voice of Thunder self-identifies with the full spectrum of human experience. For Thunder, we needn’t learn the right prayers or banish the challenging or crunch places within us to know God. Thunder says:
“Wherever you hide yourselves, I myself will appear . . . Receive me with understanding and heartache. I AM she whom they call life and you all called death. I AM the coming together and the falling apart. I AM the enduring and the disintegration.”2 If you can’t find yourself in these words, read on and surely you will find yourself . . . and where you find yourself, you will find the Holy One.
Like John’s vision in Revelation, Thunder affirms the union of the Holy with creation. In the stuff of loss and grief, “I AM” is present with the power of healing. In the stuff of: “I should have been there,” “I didn’t do enough,” “I wish I had said . . . ,” “I couldn’t bear the suffering,” “I AM” is with us with the power of healing. Where we hide away our grief, God is there. When we are sure we are strong enough to make it through, the Holy invites us to fall apart so that we can heal and come back together. The Holy holds space where the parts of ourselves that endure can embrace that in us which needs to disintegrate and be reborn.
It continues to astound me in my own grief journey how often I am confronted with the news that my mother has passed. It’s been almost 3 years and still I witness members of my internal community learning the news as if for the first time . . . and I think at least one aspect of me is too devastated to accept the truth. I eventually identify her, acknowledge her, listen to her, invite her to come together with the Holy for healing. The union of the holy and ordinary means that no one is left out.
What really struck me about this translation of Revelation is the reframing of God wiping our tears as ceremony. Ceremony and ritual are what we do to remember . . . to remember the things that are most important, the things that are impossible to access any other way. We practice ceremony and ritual to remember with our whole selves, to assemble a deeply held truth once again. In this space of union of the holy and the ordinary, where there has been loss, where there has been weeping and pain, God offers this ceremony of affirmation of the continuity of life. Somehow, the world continues . . . even without our loved ones in the flesh. Astoundingly, the world continues. The Holy One proclaims they are making all things new . . . through healing we are made new. Thanks be to God.
1 Revelation 4:6 NRSV
2 “The Thunder: Perfect Mind” in A New New Testament, excerpts from p. 183-6