Resisting the History of Winners

When I was in kindergarten, we were learning about the seasons and I remember my teacher saying something about how we didn’t really experience autumn in Southern California because the leaves didn't change color and fall from the trees. 

Except that I had just helped my dad clean up the leaves in our backyard. (If you’ve ever wondered when I began questioning what I was taught, this was probably the moment.)

Having lived in places that have “real” fall for most of my adult life, I now understand what she meant and I have come to appreciate the rhythm of the seasons.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an event in which Diana Butler Bass spoke about the liturgical seasons and how they contrast with the linear calendar of Empire and I’ve been pondering this a lot and it leads me to a place of great hope.

We often hear that “history repeats” or “history rhymes,” but I think when we look around at how God speaks through nature and through Scripture, we can see that history cycles. 

Several years ago, I participated in a Bible study and the facilitator talked about how the book of Judges tells the same basic story seven times. It’s the story of the sin/salvation cycle. Peace - Sin - Suffering and Death - Repentance - Reconciliation and Salvation… Repeat.

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man, which assumed the linear progression of human history and that liberal democracy was the ultimate endpoint. Yet, here we are. 

I wonder how many of us accepted this linear progression and now feel betrayed by history itself, maybe even by God. But, the idea that we could conquer history is the myth of Empire.

In the linear telling of history, there are winners and losers, but in the cyclical view, the meek inherit the earth. Then, the meek pursue power and eventually seek domination until they eventually collapse and the meek inherit the earth, again.

I’ll be reading Diana Butler Bass’s A Beautiful Year through the liturgical year, which begins on the first Sunday of Advent (November 30) and I invite you to join me in this act of resistance against the Empire’s timeline.