Tohu Vavohu

When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

In the original Hebrew of the Scriptures, the words translated here as "formless and empty" were tohu va vohu, meaning "wild and waste,"  indicating emptiness.   

The words "Spirit of God" come from the Hebrew ruah, meaning "rushing-spirit."  It carries the meaning of breath, breeze, or strong wind.

 And the word "hovering" carries the image of "flitting; the image is that of an eagle protecting its young in the nest.

All of the images associated with the story of Creation are repeated in the history of Israel, taken from nothingness -- the darkness, wild and waste of paganism in the case of Abraham; the darkness, emptiness of life in the case of Hebrew slaves -- and brought into order, balance, and harmony through a living, loving relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth.  Chapter 32 of Deuteronomy echoes all the themes of Genesis, the first creation:

In a desert land he found him [Israel],

in a barren and howling waste.

He shielded him and cared for him;

he guarded him as the apple of his eye, 

like an eagle that stirs up its nest 

and hovers over its young,

that spreads its wings to catch them

and carries them on its pinions. 

The Lord alone led him;

no foreign god was with him.

  Once again, man is led into Eden, where he has fellowship with the divine Creator of heaven and earth. All the richness of the Promised Land (Israel) echo the Garden of Paradise:

 He made him ride on the heights of the land,/ and fed him with the fruit of the fields.

He nourished him with honey from the rock, /and with oil from the flinty crag,

with curds and milk from herd and flock,/ and with fattened lambs and goats,

with choice rams of Bashan,/and the finest kernels of wheat./

You drank the red blood of the grape. 

All of the story of the Bible from beginning to end leads to the story of US.  According to St. Augustine in his commentary on Genesis, our souls/spirits are formless and empty, wild and waste, until the Word of God speaks life and order into them: Let there be Light! 

The "Light" of Genesis 1, day 1,  is obviously not the sun, as the sun is created on Day 4.  Rather the Light spoken of here is energy, beauty, order, illumination -- the same Light spoken by the Word of God in the Gospel of John, chapter 1:  In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

And John 8: I am the Light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

St. Augustine says that for Jesus, the Word of God, to "live" means to live wisely and happily.  But a creature, although it has a spiritual nature endowed with intellect or reason, can have a formless (wild and waste) life.  For Jesus, living is not the same as possessing a life of wisdom and happiness. For when man is turned away from changeless Wisdom, his life is full of folly and wretchedness, and so it is in an unformed state (tohu va vohu).  Its formation consists in its turning to the changeless light of Wisdom, the Word of God.  The Word -- Light! Be! ---is the source of whatever being and life the creature has, and to the Word it must turn in order to live wisely and happily.

The Gospel of John sums up all the lessons of creation and history in one Person -- the Word, the Light, the Alpha and the Omega.  If we read nothing else but that Gospel, we have all the Wisdom we need to turn to the Rushing Spirit of God, hovering over our chaos.  We, too, can become a new creation by allowing the Word of God to enter our tohu va vohu, our emptiness!

What Can I Do?

 Recently I read a book called Sacred Encounters with Mary, an account of visitations people have had with the Mother of Jesus.  Most of these encounters are very simple, and yet profound in their own way.  The following one impressed me:

As I was going into meditation one day, I asked of [Mary], "How can I help to prepare the way for the the return of Christ?"  A little while later, she appeared to me in a vision and I saw her roll up her sleeves....As she rolled up her sleeves, she took me by the hand and led me to a sink where we proceeded to wash dishes together.  In that moment, we were just two women doing what needed to be done.  Interestingly, I have an expression that I have used before and since this encounter: "Talking doesn't do it, reading doesn't do it it; living is what does it."  And I always say that if you can't wash dishes with me, you haven't got it.

 Matthew Kelly, a renowned speaker on the Catholic circuit, always says, "Just do the next right thing!"  We often wonder what we can do to help, especially in view of world-wide hunger and poverty, violence, human trafficking, and just plain ignorance.  I think we have to commit our lives to God and trust that He is able to use our talents in His own way.  We want to be useful; we want our lives to count for something, but we are helpless to know what to do.  

St. Therese lived perhaps one of the most "useless" lives of all, behind the cloister walls, and died at the age of 24.  And yet today she is known world-wide as the patroness of missions.  Her way of life was unbounded confidence in God, trusting Him to accomplish in her all that He desired.

I think we can all wash dishes -- or do whatever is needed at the moment to clean up the world we live in.  It may not seem like much, but as Mother Teresa often pointed out, a pencil in the hand of God can change people's lives.

Gratitude!

 Last week, I had a follow-up visit with the doctor who performed the bronchoscopy, and what she told me then made my post-anesthesia vision even more meaningful.  All the tests for cancer were negative, thank God, although it seems that what they have been seeing in my lung since 2016 is a fungus caused by breathing in mold, usually from decaying plant matter.  It makes sense, as I have been gardening for many years, using leaf mold as mulch, cleaning out gutters and breathing in mold, etc.  

However, the reason I was under anesthesia so long was that the doctor struck a blood vessel in the lung as she removed tissue for diagnosis.  Although she was using a scan to guide the procedure, it seems that blood vessels do not show up on the scan.  As blood spurted all over the room, the doctor's colleague suggested that she not biopsy me another time, and she was not at all sure she could stop the bleeding.  

I asked how she did stop the bleeding, and she simply stated: I prayed.

After hearing her answer, my vision of the 23rd Psalm covering me as a blanket became even more stunning; I had not realized how close I had been to dying.  How can I thank the Lord for what He has done for me?