Recalling Our Ebenezers
December 2023 Granola Newsletter
Lately I’ve been thinking about “Ebenezers”—in the Bible, ebhen hā-ʽezer, or “stone of help.” In the Old Testament, the prophet Samuel sets up a great stone as a commemoration of God’s help and assistance to His people. According to 1 Samuel 7:12, “He named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the LORD has helped us.’” The stone would remain there long after Samuel died. For generations to come, God’s people would see the stone as a tangible reminder of who God was, and of who they were. It was a testament to the past that gave hope for the future.
Not many people use the term “Ebenezer” anymore (unless we are talking about Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol). In the old Christian hymn “Come Thou Fount,” Robert Robinson wrote, “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I’ve come…” Many folks sing these words today without knowing what they mean. But the idea behind Robinson’s words is that we all should have stones of remembrance in our lives. We should have durable keepsakes of past lessons and hard times—keepsakes that remind us who we are and how far we’ve come.
I’ve had a rather funny “Ebenezer” saved as an email draft on my computer for seven years. Every year or so, I open my “drafts” folder. I see it, and re-read it. It’s a simple list of ideas and resolutions I wrote to myself. But honestly, it’s been life-changing.
I wrote the below words as a young 20-something, a brand new baby writer, living and working in Washington, D.C. I wrote them as a young transplant from Idaho, trying to figure out who I was and who I should be. It was intense, working in the journalism world. It was hard trying to figure out how to make good decisions in a place and a career that both seemed to have incredibly huge demands on my time, energy, and identity. I needed something to hold on to, and something to aspire to.
And so one Friday, I opened up a new email, and wrote a letter to myself. I saved it as a draft. And it’s been there ever since.
THINGS TO REMEMBER:
Have relationships, and make time for them. (The importance of community & family, not indulging in 24/7 work.)
Be willing to say “no.” (Make a list of priorities, and say no to everything and anything that will prevent you from fully embracing those priorities.)
Take care of your body. (Sleep, exercise, good food, not constantly living at your desk.)
Remember why you write in the first place. (Writing for justice, to describe the human experience, to advocate for those w/o a voice, to keep the art of storytelling alive? I forget these aspirations in the day-to-day writing process.)
Don't let editors/peers tell you what you should believe/write. (We can often lose our thoughtfulness, discretion, and convictions when we acquiesce to popular voices.)
Always ask for—and take—advice. (Counter-point to the above: you always think you know more than you actually do.)
Remember your limits. (Just because you have opinions doesn't mean they're good. Remember there are millions of smarter, kinder, better people in the world. Your job should be about shining a spotlight on them, not about shining one on yourself.)
Never stop reading. (And read lots of people you disagree with.)
Have a creative hobby (Flannery O'Connor, via ParisReview: Many disciplines could help your writing, she said, but especially drawing: “Anything that helps you to see. Anything that makes you look.” Also, fiction/poetry, gardening, cooking/baking, etc.)
This is a very simple list. It’s nothing ground-breaking. But that’s sort of the point, I think. It was a list of the “bare minimum” things I needed to keep in mind and hold onto. Other goals and aspirations might change. Life circumstances would change over and over again. But because of the bare-bones simplicity of this list, I could keep coming back to it, learning from it, and altering my expectations and aspirations according to its framework.
Reading this seven years later, I realized this simple list is a kind of Ebenezer: a stone of help. It recalls a time when much felt in flux. It reminds me of who I hoped to both remain and become. It’s always popped up when I’ve needed it most, drawing me back to items on the list that I’ve neglected or forgotten about. It doesn’t sum up everything. But it’s reminded me of a lot of important things. It has reminded me that in a season that often felt very difficult and hard, “Thus far the Lord has helped me.”
Ebenezers must be tangible, but they must also tell a story. My email draft is almost too ephemeral and virtual to be an Ebenezer, but its presence has been durable and constant through the years. Better still to have tangible tokens, tombstones and talismans, that tell vital stories of our past. People, landmarks, and things all remind us what it means to live well in this world.
Why do you think Scrooge’s first name is “Ebenezer” in A Christmas Carol?
Knowing Dickens, it is no accident. Ebenezer is described at the beginning of the book as a ruthless individual, as “hard and sharp as flint.” This stony individual is himself helped by the three spirits, who travel with him to moments in his past that then speak to his present and threaten his future. Finally, with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge appears before his own “Ebenezer”: a neglected tombstone that bears his name. This tombstone is a literal stone of help, Mark D. Roberts has written for Patheos. It finally draws Scrooge out of his brokenness and bleakness, from the darkness of his old habits into light and hope.
In this transformation, however, Ebenezer becomes himself a “stone of help” for others: as he says on Christmas morning, “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!… I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!’”
To live in the past, the present, and the future is the work of an Ebenezer. It stands testament to what has passed, helps us to reflect on our present, and guides us toward a better future. As Scrooge makes plain, we ourselves can tell a story of remembrance to the world. We too can become Ebenezers.
Are there “Ebenezers” you’ve found or built in your own life? Were they planned or unplanned?
How can we learn from Scrooge’s transformation? Can we ourselves become “Ebenezers”? Do you have friends, family members, or acquaintances who’ve become your “Ebenezers” over the years?
news + essays
D. Graham Burnett and Alyssa Loh issue a vital invitation: “Instead of fretting that students’ flagging attention doesn’t serve education, we must make attention itself the thing being taught…. What democracy most needs now is an attentive citizenry — human beings capable of looking up from their screens, together.”
“In order to redeem our historical imperfections, should we aim to forget them, or take aim at the evils of the past as if they have never gone away?” Matt Miller asks. “Or is there some other way to make these imperfections somehow part of who we are, to name and bind the wounds that mark us?”
Eve Tushnet writes a delightful review of Entangled Life: “Rather than modeling our understanding of lichen on other relationships, Sheldrake proposes, we might model our understanding of ourselves on lichen. Gently, playfully, Sheldrake will push you to rethink individuality: to see yourself not as an individual careening around and bouncing off of other individuals, not even as one interdependent thread in life’s great tangle, but as, yourself, a tangle.”
books
Fragile Neighborhoods, by Seth Kaplan
Seth’s insightful book considers the importance of resilient local communities in cultivating lasting cultural and political health. As the Stanford Social Innovation Review put it, “What is needed is not more top-down action, but sideways action, neighborhood by neighborhood across the nation. What does this entail? How does it differ from other approaches?” Seth explores importance answers, solutions, and examples in his book.
The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart
This is our current family read-aloud book. I’ve never read it before. I think I’m most impressed, thus far, by the way Stewart applauds and celebrates children’s unique talents and strengths without suggesting one is somehow better than the other. My oldest is loving it, and encouraged by it.
food + drink
We will be making this shepherd’s pie all winter long.
These maple pecan sticky buns were excellent. And easy to make.
Recipes to try: Candied pecans, mushroom gnocchi, and a caramelized onion tart.
I really love the idea of an Ebenezer, though I don’t think I’ve intentionally kept one, besides journals (but like you said, that’s maybe not a true Ebenezer which is more tangible, more of a keepsake).
An unintentional one (which was my dad’s idea for our whole family to get) might be my tattoo of my late mother’s initials. It’s not quite a guiding light into a better future as perhaps the tattoo in O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” haha. But it’s a small token that reminds me of the great woman that bore me and her humble and joyous faith in Christ, even in the face of her own death. In that way it is certainly encouraging and transformative.
Though, to be honest, I don’t much like tattoos, which is why this one is in white ink haha. I might swallow my pride and get it renewed in black ink next year on the 10th anniversary.
This is not nearly as thoughtful as your list! but I still keep a piece of paper torn from the planner I carried in high school with a list of the things I wanted to prioritize if I ever had a house of my own. I had not thought about it in years when I came across it while looking for something else, but every item on the list appears in some form in the home I live in now. I now save it intentionally because it reminds me that despite the many things that have turned out differently than I had expected, and despite how different I am in some ways than I was when I made that list, there's a core to me that has stayed the same, and there are good dreams that have been fulfilled.