Variations on the Theme of “Yet”
[“Though the fig tree should not blossom / And there be no fruit on the vines, / Though the yield of the olive should fail / And the fields produce no food, / Though the flock should be cut off from the fold / And there be no cattle in the stalls, / Yet I will exult in the LORD, / I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. / The LORD is my strength, / who has made my feet like those of deer, / And makes me walk on the heights” (Hab 3:17-19 [EA]).]
[“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, . . .(yet) You are with me” (Ps 23:4).]
O Lover,
Our present moment is a stark one. The tense of disintegration has shifted from future to present: what had been suspected, feared, denied, or rationalized is now upon us. The term “crisis,” whether humanitarian or cultural, constitutional or spiritual, is no longer hyperbolic. The lives of millions of the planet’s denizens are at risk, the natural environment has been delivered a ticking death sentence, fear is pervasive among the marginally targeted and beyond, the societal center is graphically sliding away. All of this is baptized, bastardized, by a mutant form of christianity cow-eyedly dallying with fascism. This time the rot is not most evidently in “Denmark,” but in the pátria. For the foreseeable we are in Joseph’s “lean years” (Gen 41).
We need to remember that while the particulars may vary, there have been such crises before. A glimpse of this is the bleak first half of the above Habakkuk passage which appears to date from the generation immediately preceding the immolation of Jerusalem (586 BCE). All of the text’s images are agricultural involving food, nourishment, and the very sustaining of life. All is about to be náda. Furthermore, in each of these same bio-images involving vitality, growth, and time—fig trees, vines, olive trees, fields, flocks, cattle—the devastated present bodes catastrophe for the future: if today is misery, tomorrow is the unspeakable. Surely this blight on external resources finds expression in an internal desolation of spirit as well.
Against this backdrop the prophet’s text pivots abruptly and profoundly on the fulcrum of the word “yet.” It is a jarring “yet,” one which strains creditability here. Furthermore, what follows (vs 18) is not a denial of the situation’s severity, nor the launching of another pragmatic “reset,” nor an activist timetable for reconstruction of the new. All of these have apparently already been weighed and found wanting; indeed, they may well be part of what constitutes the crisis! Rather, the prophet simply writes of “exulting,” of “rejoicing,” in You, O Lover. It is as if You to whom the seer pivots are Reality Itself whatever else might or might not transpire. This transit from “though . . .[to] . . . yet” speaks in particular to those “walk[ing] through the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps 23:4) in the face of hostility or calamity. While optimism is often based upon an assessment of analytical data, hope is grounded in You, O Lover. While I am often perplexed as to the connection between Your Self-diffusion in all that is and this or that, I need not allow that to undermine my identification with Habakkuk’s pivot. O Lover, I am needful of that reassurance now.
Of my nearly eighty-five years, I am experiencing 2025 as the most nakedly and comprehensively bleak of them all. I continue to cling to You as the Reality within whom all of the ominousness is held and being transformed. To paraphrase the father of the son whom Jesus healed (Mk 9:24): I do trust You, O Lover; fortify that trust when it falters or fails.
So then, “Heaven and earth will pass away . . .” (Mt 24:35). Yet.
