Younger than that now...

Lately I have been listening to Bob Dylan's 'My Back Pages.' I mean really listening to almost every version out there, and there are many. Certainly The Byrds have the corner on the "charts" version from 1967, but all of them carry the same haunting theme: "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." The universal sense of these words is that age brings wisdom and a willingness to become more open than we were when young and idealistic. I have been combining this listening with a regular dose of reading in the biblical prophecy of Isaiah, especially Isa 28-29. It's a rather potent combination.

Dylan uses insightful phrase such as "ideas as my map," "self-ordained professor's tongue too serious to fool," "Fearing not that I'd become my enemy in the instant that I preach," and the way-too-insightful-for-his-age "abstract threats too noble to neglect Deceiving me into thinking I had something to protect," all to build a growing consciousness of his youthful angst giving way to either a balanced maturity or a existential melancholy. Certainly by watching Dylan's actual life one can make a reasonable judgement of the difference.

But here is the thing, life runs in cycles of dysfunctional youth to the maturity of age with a hopeful developing of balance and compromise (in the right areas). "Lies that life is black and white spoke from my skull, I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers foundationed deep, somehow." The dreaming about "romantic" escapades to tear down walls and win argument "proud 'neath heated brows" was once the means used to produce the future. We "memorize politics of ancient history" to uncover the lessons of the past and spout about "Equality...as if a wedding vow." There is much self-awareness of the exuberance of idealist visions in this one song. It seems almost as if we could "climb every mountain" and certainly "give peace a chance." "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

Now, is another time. Liberals have come and gone "from power" as have the conservatives. The Dems have it, oopps, now the GOP has it. And we swing back and forth. Those are the "abstract threats too noble to neglect." We keep believing we have "something to protect." All of us. The ascendancy of one party over another is just "another day in paradise." "One more starry eyed messiah" has risen to the "chair" and we end up with another set of definitions for "Good and bad, I define these terms quite clear, no doubt, somehow." But with the songwriter, is it just possible to take a step back from the cycles (even news cycles) and say "Ah, but I was so much younger then I'm younger than that now."

This is where, for me, Isaiah comes in by reminding that, "For tyrants will disappear, those who taunt will vanish, and all those who love to do wrong will be eliminated – those who bear false testimony against a person, who entrap the one who arbitrates at the city gate and deprive the innocent of justice by making false charges." All these things which are a part of the culture of humanity, will not last forever. You can fight against them all your life, and to protect the innocent, you should, but it doesn't stop. Jesus himself once said, "the poor you will always have with you." That was not to say "therefore do nothing" to really and seriously understand the bigger picture of humanities situation. We are "deceived into thinking we have something to protect," when we know we can only do so much. The unjust king arises and taunts and decrees and levies and destroys and lies and .... We have all seen them come and go. We need reminding that God alone is in charge and though our hands can be God's hands and our feet God's feet, "unless the Builder builds the house, those who labor do so in vain." To be "younger than than now" just might mean to become a child who is ultimately willing to trust, and seriously so, that God is in control, not the conservative evangelicals nor the old white Republicans, nor the young progressives of whatever social, ethnic, religious, or life-orientation perspective.

This is not a cry to bury our heads in the ground. This is not a cry to withdraw to Walden's Pond. There is much to work for and do in the name of common love, respect and dignity for all humanity. The Good Samaritan is much needed in any age. But it is a call to know, in faith and truth that "Therefore I (, the Lord) will again do an amazing thing for all people - an absolutely extraordinary deed. Wise men will have nothing to say, the sages will have no explanations. Those who try to hide their plans from the Lord are as good as dead, who do their work in secret and boast, 'Who sees us? Who knows what we’re doing?' Your thinking is perverse! Should the potter be regarded as clay? Should the thing made say about its maker, 'He didn’t make me'? Or should the pottery say about the potter, 'He doesn’t understand?'" We have turned our thinking upside down, all of us, in an attempt to secure our borders, personal and societal. But as clay, as pottery, we must trust the Potter. And maybe, just maybe, we will say "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."