havering through 1189

Okay, so I just got tired of waiting.

This is now the home of the blog formerly known as “Project 1189” – at least until the technical difficulties are straightened out at the WordPress site on our server. I had just gotten into Joshua when the site hiccupped and left me feeling like John the Baptist’s dad – but only mute for 6 weeks or so rather than 9 months. I actually stopped the reading and writing at that point, waiting for the site to come back. One day hopefully they’ll sort it out, but in the meantime, I’ll haver here.

As you can see from the blog header, haver has at least two layers of meaning depending on whether we’re talking about English or Hebrew – but both meanings are, I think, curiously related. The best theologian on his best day is still only hemming and hawing when compared with the vastness of God. At best, we fingerpaint when we delve into the things of God. It’s when we become impressed with our own supposed profundity that we become the most dangerous and doltish. But when we see ourselves invited to fingerpaint, to get our hands covered and messy with the things of God, we can end up creating some striking – not to mention fun – portraits.

Who would have thought that theology could be fun. If only there weren’t so many of us who in doing it end up sucking the life out of others and ourselves.

So let’s hem and haw, babble and maunder (now there’s another good word!). Friends can do that with friends; God invites us to haver with him. It was reading Ann Spangler in her book, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, discuss the Jewish word haver (plural haverim) as the word for “friends” or fellow students in a Jewish school (a Yeshiva). She says a haver in ordinary usage can simply mean a companion or a close friend, but in the context of seminary or school life, it is “someone who is willing to partner with you in grappling with Scripture and with the rabbinic texts.” She contrasts university libraries (or any libraries) in America with a Yeshiva library filled with havers. Our libraries are, of course, quiet. Students sit in separate cubicles or study silently at shared tables. In a Yeshiva, you are met with loud voices and gesticulations (I had to use that word!) as haverim argue and debate and, well, haver. I don’t think we know how to haver like that, at least not without our havering becoming hateful. I would suggest that to a large degree that’s because we forget we are all in the final analysis hemming and hawing and maundering with each other. It’s what Job realized about all his words when he finally encountered God – and God said he had spoken well. It was his pompous friends with all the sure answers that received the divine frowns. And then Job maundered some prayers for them.

So it is in this spirit that I once again deign to finger paint in a blog. Don’t ask me for a schedule for Project 1189 – I’m just going to move on through the Bible, picking back up in Joshua, at a leisurely pace. Hemming and hawing as opposed to a beeline. The goal isn’t the Bible in one year or two or three, but simply to read, to think, to write – to haver, to fingerpaint – however long it takes. And they’ll be other things I’ll haver about here as well. The occasional book review or excerpts, random observations and thoughts from whatever I happen to be reading, listening to, or watching.

And if I haver, yeah I know I’m gonna be / I’m gonna be the man who’s havering to you…