a candidate for daring?

As I embark on the adventure of 2009, seeking again (still, anew) to be faithful to this vocation of "building up the body of Christ by creating and sharing songs of faith for small and tall," I am drawn to these words (yes, Brueggemann again) that, I think, express it very well. They help me to better understand my own role, along with those of other colleagues, companions and co-conspirators in the context of, and for the sake of, the work of the church in the world.

"It is the work of canonical practice in ecclesial communities and the work of criticism in the scholarly community to keep the (biblical) text available. It is by the ongoing enterprise of religious and scholarly communities that the text lingers over time in available ways. Out of that lingering, from time to time, words of the text characteristically erupt into new usage. They are seized upon by someone in the community with daring. Or perhaps better, the words of the text seize someone in the community who is a candidate for daring. In that moment of reutterance, the present is freshly illuminated, reality is irreversibly transformed. The community comes to know or see or receive or decide afresh. What has been tradition, hovering in dormancy, becomes available experience. In the moment of speaking and hearing, treasured tradition becomes present experience, inimitable, without parallel, irreversible. In that utterance, the word does lead reality."

Will I be "a candidate for daring" this year? Will you?

Will our community(ies) "come to know or see or receive or decide afresh?"

That is my prayer. Looking forward to working (walking, singing, musing) together with you again.

(The full text of Brueggemann's article "Texts That Linger, Words That Explode" can be found here. I read it in his book by the same name, with the subtitle "Listening to Prophetic Voices.")