Nostalgia can be sweet - and toxic. As elections showed this week - some of us prefer the imagined norms of by-gone eras over evolving fluid often messy realness of who and how we are becoming now. This tension, both ancient and current, is found this week in the chapter of Joshua, the Bible as blueprint for how to not look back but look ahead with courage.
The past is glorified in our culture - museums boast antiquities often stolen from native lands, antique dealers value history’s varnished heirlooms, history matters! archeologists dig up new important finding and facts that help us learn more about our origins.
The island I live on still echoes its Native American origins so cruelly colonized, but who remembers THAT? When we honor the past do we lift up those who came before us - even those whose cultures and beliefs we replaced with our own?
The Book of Joshua is testament to the conflicted conversation between taking over the norms that came before us and naming them as ours - or repressing them altogether. Joshua conquers Canaan and eventually renames it Israel but conflicting narratives in the book tell us that the locals were either decimated - or continue to live alongside their new neighbors/occupiers. Which is it? And is it the ruins of Canaan that become the bedrock of Israelite religion? Heaps of rocks, untold numbers of slain victims of that war, battles and miracles whisper from these well worn pages - remember us - but don’t get stuck in what was.
Progress from the past problematic handling of the past and lets honor each other’s legacy and lore, lives and loves - together? For Israel and the US, and all over the world, a kind and firm reminder to honor our past, not worship the ruins, and focus on the now and next.
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Shabbat Shalom.
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Cult of Ruins?