They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the time we were with them tending the sheep. Yet the men were very good to us, and we were not insulted, nor did we miss anything as long as we went about with them, while we were in the fields. These wineskins which we filled were new, and behold, they are torn and these our clothes and our sandals are worn out because of the very long journey.”īut one of the young men told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, “Behold, David sent messengers from the wilderness to greet our master, and he scorned them. So our elders and all the inhabitants of our country spoke to us, saying, ‘Take provisions in your hand for the journey, and go to meet them and say to them, “We are your servants now then, make a covenant with us.”’ This our bread was warm when we took it for our provisions out of our houses on the day that we left to come to you but now behold, it is dry and has become crumbled. They went to Joshua to the camp at Gilgal and said to him and to the men of Israel, “We have come from a far country now therefore, make a covenant with us.” The men of Israel said to the Hivites, “Perhaps you are living within our land how then shall we make a covenant with you?” But they said to Joshua, “We are your servants.” Then Joshua said to them, “Who are you and where do you come from?” They said to him, “Your servants have come from a very far country because of the fame of the Lord your God for we have heard the report of Him and all that He did in Egypt, and all that He did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon king of Heshbon and to Og king of Bashan who was at Ashtaroth. I pray that you can help us further construct something beautiful with this issue, and that participating in this act of witness refreshes something within your soul.When the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, they also acted craftily and set out as envoys, and took worn-out sacks on their donkeys, and wineskins worn-out and torn and mended, and worn-out and patched sandals on their feet, and worn-out clothes on themselves and all the bread of their provision was dry and had become crumbled. But to fully encompass the theme of “Witness,” we need you. While the following pieces are beautiful, some of them are heavy. This, dear reader, is what I want to invite you into. To witness their sorrows, their joys, the intricacies of their personhood. In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy in it.” To bear another person is to bear witness to them. The second meaning is what I’m asking you to do. These artists have borne witness through the ways they’ve created, staking a claim that says, “I exist. The prose, poetry, artwork, and photography contained in this edition demonstrate the first meaning-to tell or to show. The word “witness” can mean two different things. It was easier to bear the grief of losing a dear professor and friend when I could ignore his absence.
I was more grieved by the loss of a tomato plant that I had watched die over the course of several weeks than by the death of a fern that I’d forgotten existed. It’s true that closing your eyes minimizes the pain. I’ve wanted to, and I have, plugged my ears and closed my eyes at several points, and I imagine you have, too.
I’ll save you the spiel of “unprecedented circumstances” and “trying times.” You know exactly what this past year and a half has been like: the trials, the tears, the breaking, and the healing.
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