Godspeed Forever? (Isaiah meets RamDass)

Isaiah 60:22

Are we there yet?? 

The yearning for some sort of Utopian/Messianic endgame has been part of many cultures’ ongoing mythologies, sometimes at odds with each other’s calculations.  

Look, says Isaiah the prophet to the people of Jerusalem who keep waiting for the good times they’ve been promised: The doves are flying home --  in a beautiful depiction of swift safe return, a moving motif of the exile all over.

The doves, like the clouds,, almost effortlessly, fly towards the future and know how to find their home once again, Isaiah proclaims is his poetic prophetic agenda that’s meant to give his suffering people the gifts of hope - and patience. It’s going to take time. 

Life’s tough in Judea  in the 6th century BCE, often on the frontlines of turmoil. Despite the generations of previous prophetic promises that everything will indeed be fantastic once Zion is rebuilt and ruled by justice - reality on the ground was very different. The city was slow to rebuild, with local resistance, and not exactly governed with excessive justice, but rather with many obstacles.  Jerusalem was waiting for the returnees from Babylon but it was not empty - a city populated by different people from foreign lands, torn by intrigues and tensions, poverty and insecurity, suspicion and strife. 

The prophet’s role here is to provide visions of a better future worth waiting for and fighting for: A better time in which everything is upgraded. It will be like a great dawn will rise again, he promises, using lots of light motifs throughout the chapter. Most striking is the promise that at the end of time there will be no natural time - no more sunrise or sunset, new or full moon - just divine light, all the time, 24/7. Except there won’t be days to even think about that. Time will be timeless.

But when will that happen -  the people want to know: When do we get there? Are we there yet? 

 Isaiah responds with a curious response that’s also time-related but a riddle at the same time:

הַקָּטֹן֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָאֶ֔לֶף וְהַצָּעִ֖יר לְג֣וֹי עָצ֑וּם אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָ֖ה בְּעִתָּ֥הּ אֲחִישֶֽׁנָּה׃        

The smallest shall become a clan;

The least, a mighty nation.

I YHWH will speed up the redemption in due time.

Isaiah 60:22

So when will this future be exactly? Rush job or in due time?? 

In the future you will be a big deal, he promises. Whenever that future will be. Just like the notion of no sun and moon to guide the days and night anymore so also here the allusion is to divine time that does not work along our calculations. 

But God’s time, Isaiah adds, is not exactly the same as ours.  It seems to be a contradiction that has puzzled many since — will it be speedy if it’s right on time? And when exactly?

Ask the doves, he says - they too remember their ancestor who waited patiently for the flood waters to subside before becoming the symbol of salvation. Be patient. 

Godspeed. 

(Godspeed, by the way, since I got curious about this expression, is not about time or speed in our modern sense at all. The “speed” in “Godspeed” isn’t about quickness. The word “speed” itself didn’t mean quickness when it first showed up in Anglo-Saxon context approx. 1,300 years ago. It meant ‘success’ or ‘good fortune’ in Old English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Speed came to mean something more like ‘fast pace’ than ‘success’ as a result of reading another biblical passage at some point in the Middle Ages. The verse that scholars claim first introduced that notion is the text in Genesis 19, in which Abraham and Sarah are being told that  a baby boy will be born to Sarah - a year from the time the promise is made.  That expression - ‘now, in a year’ is where ‘speed’ comes in - as if to say - what does it mean for a 90 year old woman to become pregnant and wait for that birth to arrive?)

While we humans have an often urgent sense of what we want and when we want it - most mystics will agree that things seem to work differently in the celestial spheres and timing is more drawn out and complex. Not on our clock. Like Sarah waiting for that baby, or Noah for that dove — Urgency and instant gratification, super-speed express are not necessarily on the divine agenda. Process and patience are priorities instead. 

In the Talmud they explain this contraction between the sense of speed and ‘just on time’ with a famous condition - If we observe the divine laws and live according to what we’ve been told will be righteous behavior - it’ll be quick. But if we don’t - it’s going to take as long as it does. 

No use asking the driver - are we there yet? 

There is one more creative way of reading Isaiahs’ words here, @Ramdass style: Speaking for the divine source, Isaiah, like so many other seers before and after him may  may be saying - B’Ata Achishena -  the redemption will be right on time - because the only real time was, will be, and ss always  - may as well cultivate patience - and always Be Here Now.

Goodbye Isaiah, Hello Jeremiah

Please join me on Zoom for our next Monthly Conversation, as we wrap up the Book of Isaiah, venture into Jeremiah’s world and explore what these ancient prophets have to offer our inner and political lives - just in time for a new Jewish year and continued political challenges - everywhere. 

Join us on Thursday, August 17th 2023, at 1pm ET.

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