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Numerous native American traditions. There is a story of the wendigo. In popular culture they are creatures of horror that live in the woods, skin stretched over and lengthened bones stretched out fingers and claws teeth grown to a point with great speed and incredible strength.
And the traditions. Though there’s no singles story of their origins. But they come often from tribes of the North woods where winter are literal life and death. Some traditions say wendigo is created when a human consumes the flesh of another human while there are other food options around and then they have an insatiable taste desire for more human flesh. The other origin story is consumption of a different kind: of greed and hoarding and accumulation at the expense of the other. The results is the same in their consumption at the expense of another or the community they become less human gaunt insatiable a monster who just consumes more and more.
If a member of the tribe began presenting with a wendigo mentality, focused on consuming human flesh, a holy person would be brought in to save them. I wonder if the same is true for one whose mentality was consumed economically resources. If a holy person was brought in to realign the one with the windigo mentality and restore their place in the community, the collective.
We don’t really have stories in most of our cultural stories that speak as a warning to this kind of mentality,
though in Robin Wright Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass, she writes that Windigo footprints are all around, notes Kimmerer: “They are the tracks of insatiable consumption.”
Kimmerer recalls a scene while walking down a street in Manhattan. “Where the warm light of a lavish home spilled out over the sidewalk on a man picking through the garbage for his dinner. Maybe we’ve all been banished to lonely corners by our obsession with private property. We’ve accepted banishment even from ourselves when we spend our beautiful utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed but never satisfy. It is the Wendigo way that tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger when it is belonging that we crave.”
In the Gospel of luke we have the parable of Lazarus and the rich man because while the rich man feasted all the days of his life, he did not notice Lazarus and at their death Lazarus was welcomed into the arms of Abraham while the rich man continued to not see Lazarus as his brother, but it is largely a forgotten story.
And we have this story. Or the story behind the poem.
The single most important event in the Jewish Scripture, the Old Testament as we call it, is the conquest and exile of Judea and Jerusalem by Babylon. Not that a statement for all of Jewish history, just the history we have in the pre-Jesus portion of this book.
The exile marks a change in how the people lived, understood themselves, interacted with their God and neighbors, thought about their place in the cosmos. It is the exile that defines when the words of scripture were put in place–was it before, during, or after the exile. It means that even the ancient stories, stories that were told around fires for hundreds of years, were influenced by the exile by those who put quill to parchment.
It has been nearly 70 years since Jerusalem was capture, the temple was destroyed, and those who were anyone were taken into the Empire of Babylon.
It’s roughly their third generation in exile and well. I’m sure a lot has changed, it’s likely not all of it has been for the better.
In a world of the gods there had to be a reason why this was happening. There had to be an explanation for why they had lost the land. Why they had lost their place and the explanation that the prophets give them and explain to us is that they had lived as though they were the only ones who mattered each individual or individual household and they neglected the poor, and they neglected the laborers. They neglected those who lived on the margins on the edges of society, those who lived with little.
And the prophet understood. This is how they had lived before and this is how they lived in Babylon whether they were hustling to have it all in Jerusalem or scrounging to have anything in Babylon. They lived separate from one another opposed to one another. Maybe even thinking first and foremost of themselves before anyone else.
And nothing builds empathy like living as those you mocked ridiculed left behind succeeded at the expense of. I wonder if those who had been exiled who had been taken to Babylon were reflective enough to see the similarities.
At this point in the exile, they knew Babylon was almost at its end. King Cyrus of the rising Persian empire had been hacking away and Babylon would fall… soon. I imagine the emotions of the exiles were… complicated and messy. If they had done with Jeremiah had said, they would have had homes and families within Babylon. But, their heart and their homes were miles and miles away in Jerusalem. Perhaps they were afraid they might get caught up in the fall and lose their lives, or Cyrus wouldn’t let them go home. Perhaps they celebrated the fall of their oppressors. Maybe they were excited about the possibility of return and grief filled and terrified of what they would find when they arrived, the temple in ruins, their homes neglected or taken over.
Every feeling right at their fingertips, right at the edge of their next step.
Because our prophet begins by asking, commanding those who were thirsty to come and drink and those without receive food. You who are thirsty come drink you who have little come eat. If you have no money. The cost for the food is nothing
God through the prophet talks to you and in this first part you is plural of which we don’t have a good word for. It’s y’all, y’all. It’s you. This is all y’all.
It’s hard to tell in the English translation of our bible, because you is both individual and multiple, our reading today, the prophecy from God through the prophet, begin with a plural you.
It’s such a weird start to a reading, “Ho.” So maybe we could envision Sloth in Goonies shouting “Hey you guys!” to capture the attention of all those on the pirate ship.
Hey all y’all who are thirsty, come get water. You all who are without? Come, the food is free.
And you guys, who buy what you don’t need, what doesn’t satisfy, who focus on life that doesn’t fulfill or bring joy, let’s stop that. Work and spend on what brings joy.
And then God through the prophet says I will make an eternal covenant with you with y’all And there’s two things you should know one. They already have a covenant, the covenant given by God through Moses telling them how they were and could to live in this world together well, teaching that can be summed as love God and love your neighbor. And to a covenant is not a single-sided promise but requires all participants to be participants in it. Everyone has something they have to do to honor the covenant. A marriage is a covenant wherein both parties are participants in the marriage–it doesn’t work one-sided.
And when God speaks of the covenant the plural “you” becomes singular “you.”
It goes from you, you, me, you, you, you. To an inclusive you. to us, to we, to a single community. It’s the way of living in the world that is named in South African’s Bantu language: Ubuntu: I am because we are, My humanity is inextricably wrapped up in yours, I am not fully human without you, my wellbeing is tied up in your well being.
That is the covenant. That is how they are called to love
And when the people in exile, when God’s people would live into this covenant, even the nations unknown do not know will be attracted to you.
It’s really easy for us to point fingers at others, at some of the footprints of the wendigo in our world, billionaires that can’t seem to consume enough, that they’re always looking for more.
But we can also probably point to our past because who doesn’t remember looking through a catalog in December circling items that they wanted or hoped they’d find under the tree. I think Christmas often reveals how often we spend money on things that do not satisfy or how often that money spent is at the expense of another. Often another we will never see on the other side of the world. It was easy to forget and neglect.
And when this is the way that we live the Earth responds, whether it’s islands of plastic that affect wildlife or mountains of cheap clothing made of cheap fabric that’s never going to decompose affecting humans and wildlife alike.
That is our way, our path of living in this world. The one that we’ve been handed and taught and nurtured into. It’s hard to see anything else. It’s hard to see past the cost, the commercials, the convenience.
And God tells the exiles and us. God has a better way, a path, a plan that is better. That is from a better view, from above the forest when we can only see the trees. That God can see what happens when our paths and plans continue. And knows what it could be like if we follow God’s instead.
The prophet with the words of God is the holy person calling us back away of whentogo living into the life of community, into relationship with God with other humans and with all of creation. And when we do that Earth response when we live in relationship with all of creation, response to us in celebration and joy and hand clapping and break dancing. I don’t know what the mountains and hills are doing.
Now this isn’t meant to make you feel guilty for Christmas gifts you’ve bought or your house full of things you don’t actually need. I have a house full of things I don’t actually need. And I don’t think that we have to go as far today as to completely go off the grid and excise ourselves from the consumeristic nature of our world. Although the idea of us all doing it together is really kind of attractive. But I wonder there aren’t a hundred paths from the one we find ourselves on to the one God is calling us to and we might take one step on that other little path. Of giving to a cause instead of a gift of buying less of better quality instead of more that will fall apart.
Advent is a time of waiting for the world to change. It’s a time of waiting for the Kingdom to come in its fullness. It’s waiting for Christ’s return. It’s waiting for the light to return. And those aren’t necessarily things we only wait for at Advent. We are always waiting.
I wonder if well we are waiting in this season in the time we might make small moves toward the path God, the prophet, and Christ calls us toward, to love God, our neighbors near and far, known and unknown, seen and unseen, and love all of creation.