Right now, I’m feeling like I’m in exile — sent there by the last election, sent there by the president’s actions these last seven weeks, driven there by the cruel antics of his sidekick, Elon Musk.
Most readers of this column are familiar with the biblical story of the Exile (recounted in the biblical books of Jeremiah, 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles). Early in the sixth century BCE, the kingdom of Judah was overrun by the forces of Nebuchadnezzar. Jerusalem was taken, the temple was razed, and thousands of Jews were deported.
Richard Conville
The temple was gone, the priests were gone and their rituals were gone. The world as the Jews had known it since the time of Solomon ended.
What can we (who feel ourselves exiled today), learn from the exiled of the past? How can we survive? How can we find resilience?
A recent book by Walter Brueggemann has helped me begin to answer those questions for myself. Many thoughtful Christians and contemporary colleagues of Brueggemann consider him one of the most influential scholars of the Hebrew Scriptures in the last 50 years. In his book Grace Abounds, he draws upon the rich tradition of those Hebrew Scriptures for insights.
Like me, you may find yourself exiled from the surrounding political and social culture, with its dominant emphasis on scarcity, anxiety, accumulation and monopoly (chapter 1 in the book). But, observes Brueggemann, “The Bible … repeatedly tells stories of God graciously providing abundance that overcomes the threat of scarcity” and “the prophetic tradition (of the Hebrew Scriptures) repeatedly takes aim at the ideology of scarcity and anxiety that produced accumulation aimed at monopoly.”
Your feeling of exile may have religious roots, or its origin may be political. For myself, it is both; and Brueggemann’s book can be read as addressing both.
The starting point for Brueggemann’s reflections on exile is our speech; what we, the exiled, are to talk about. He puts it this way, “Where ‘paradigms of meaning’ are shattered, exiles must pay careful and sustained attention to speech, because it requires inordinately disciplined and imaginative speech to move through the shattering to newly voiced meaning.”
“By complaining we learn to name what we abhor about exile.”
The choice is before us. Shall we copy the threats and ridicule of those in power? Shall we accommodate their orders and edicts with words of compliance and obedience? Or shall we choose another kind of speech while in exile? Is there a third way? Brueggemann says there is.
Relying on the rich tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures and the experience of the Jewish people over millennia, he outlines four kinds of speech that will foster resilience and nurture survival. In this space I only have room for two.
First, the duo of lamentation and complaint. While in exile, complain, Brueggemann counsels. By complaining we learn to name what we abhor about exile, and in lamentation we voice our sadness, disappointment and grief. In the book of Lamentations, chapter 5, the writer pleads with God: “Why have you forgotten us completely? Why have you forsaken us these many days?” Both complaints and laments build a common language, the basis of any community — and essential in exile.
Second, assurance. In response to our complaints and laments, God speaks. This is the tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. “The voice of YHWH,” Brueggemann asserts, “also sounds in the daring rhetoric of the exile, precisely in the context where Israel had sensed its abandonment by God.” Assurances such as, “Fear not, for I am with you” (as in Isaiah 41, 43 and 44) demonstrate “the situation-transforming capacity of the utterance.”
What is true of the exiles’ speech — it reconstructs, redraws and replaces the imposed exile — is also true of the speech of God in response. It transforms despair into hope.
Richard Conville is professor emeritus of communication studies at the University of Southern Mississippi and a longtime member of University Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Miss. This column was published in the Feb. 13 issue of The Pine Belt News.
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