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Mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 81F. Winds light and variable..
Tonight
Mostly cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 59F. Winds light and variable.
The story goes that when I was a toddler, my favorite view was to put my head between my feet and look at the world upside down. Apparently, I spent much of my early life in this position and there are several family photos of me seeing the world from the wrong side up. (I suppose this tells too much about me.) I have thought often these days of trying that pose again.
Jan Fuller
Times-News
[SUBMITTED PHOTO], Times-News
The world feels upside down, for sure. The news is painful of fires covering the west with danger and destruction. Injustice persists, even seems to strengthen in our culture. People are sick, quarantined, worried. Death and sorrow abound around us. It all might make better sense from the perspective with our heads down at our feet. Or not.
The Hebrew Bible prophet Jeremiah lived in a time that seems parallel to ours, prophesying beginning about 626 BCE. It was a very turbulent and dangerous time, the people had embraced other God’s and forgotten their own. Their injustices were as blatant as those of our own day. Jeremiah was called by God to reveal the people’s infidelities to God, and to warn them that they would be conquered and exiled. He shouted, wept, raged, cajoled, but got nowhere. He walked around naked, covered himself with dirt, to demonstrate how desperate were the times in which he lived. But he could not change the minds and hearts of those around him to whom he prophesied. They would not to his emotional message, threw him in prison until they were exiled to Babylon in 587 BCE.
A few days before the Jewish High Holy Days, and for all of us, it is always a good move to turn away from what keeps us far from God and our own wholeness. It is wisdom, annually, or in a more regular way, to make an accounting of our lives and hearts to determine how we may more closely follow the God who calls us to justice, equity, human rights, peace. There are some who will argue that we have, like those in Jeremiah’s time, brought all of this upon ourselves. Perhaps we have. But, this is not my point.
In the end, Jeremiah heard of a field for sale. He bought it, with precious money, in a moment when everything was wrong, when it was a crazy investment. He meant it as a symbol of faith in the future, in the return home from exile to their home, in the restoration of the faithful.
Martin Luther, the great reformer of the 16th century said, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” That is an upside down idea.
Giving up on the world, giving in to the hardship, being hopeless, is too easy. I hope and pray for us the faith to plant trees, to buy property, to invest in the future even as we take responsibility for it.
It is clear that many things are wrong. Some we can fix and some we cannot. We wait, doing our best to hang on, to have faith for the future. We work, doing our best to create systems of justice, or—at least—the longing for such a world. We do what we can to repair the earth, the human community, the systems that govern our living. We care for each other, wearing our masks and being careful of the frail. We do the “next right thing.” We vote. We work to create what we need in our local communities, in this nation, and in the world.
Sometimes when the world seems upside down, we have to think a little upside down too. It may seems crazy in the moment, but it is a sign of faith and hope that things will be well, that we will be restored, and that we are not alone, and that the smallest act has big implications for our future together.
Dr. Janet Fuller is chaplain at Elon University. Contact her at jfuller3@elon.edu.
