Staring into the In Between Spaces

 Over the years I have found considerable awareness and even insight in probing, staring contemplatively into the spaces between the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated and even contradictory conjunctions. This past week my lectio divina focused increasingly on the young captive slave girl who served Naaman’s wife in 2 Kings 5. Our grandchildren, Hannah and Isaac, visited from Pennsylvania. Then banging up against these was Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony with the January 6 committee.

 What first alerted me to ponder in greater depth was realizing that at 25 Cassidy Hutchinson is only a year older than my granddaughter Hannah. Now Hannah is a bright, attractive, spiritually alert young woman who has taught high school Spanish for two years, but I struggled with imagining her facing Cassidy Hutchinson’s situation. That came up against my attention on the Israelite slave girl from 2 Kings 5, and I began to see all of this in terms of human experience without the currently swirling legal and political issues.

 Apparently, Cassidy Hutchinson was in the heady days of starting her career in service of the Republican Party and even the Trump campaign. This seems to have reflected her values and ambitions. But now, she faces an upended future in which her current employment, residence, family, and marital situations are kept confidential for her own protection. If the MAGA movement continues to dominate the Republican Party, she will be unwelcome and have no future there. I find imagining her finding a home for her career hopes in the Democratic Party unlikely. Whatever else happens, her whole life is permanently changed, probably in ways she could never have imagined and still can’t visualize.

 The confluence of the Israelite slave girl and Cassidy Hendrickson confront us with the conundrum of competing loyalties. Was the slave girl disloyal to Israel by sending their enemy general to Elisha to be healed? Or perhaps Naaman’s loyalty was challenged by washing in Israel’s Jordan River. What competed for Cassidy Hendrickson’s loyalty that would prompt her to choose to be exiled for disloyalty? Please understand, I am not suggesting a fixed hierarchy of loyalties but gazing unswervingly into the space of this juxtaposition to probe the perpetual human dilemma of competing loyalties.

 The text says very little about the slave girl. We don’t know her name. We don’t know her age (might she even have been closer to Hannah and Cassidy Hendrickson than Sunday school art usually pictures her?). We don’t know if she ever got back to Israel. She seems to have had a somewhat positive relationship with Naaman’s wife, but we are not told anything of her relationships with Naaman. In the ancient world (and yes, still true in today’s world and not limited to war) sexual access to captive women was considered a legitimate spoil of war. Whatever life she had enjoyed before being captured was totally swept away, and whatever became of her future is lost in obscurity. Whatever Cassidy Hendrickson’s dreams were, they are now shattered, and her future is hidden behind a dark veil.

 Let me be totally clear again. I am not making any sort of legal or political statement. What my contemplations have brought me this week is exploring the mystery of how our lives unfold in unexpected ways. Three of my grandchildren are young adults taking their first steps onto the stage of their lives. The other one is halfway through high school with her own set of challenges and uncertainties. At 37, our youngest son is at an important crossroad for his life, discerning what steps to take next.

 Thought as a pastor I have walked with many people through unexpected, and often unwelcome, twists in their life paths, including spouses and parents with dementia, I could not have anticipated how dramatically my wife’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2016 would alter the trajectory of our lives. Yet, in the spaces on that journey, we are savoring joy and discerning that God is with us. I have come to recognize Psalm 23:3-4 as a metaphor for us. “He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”