A new psalm of lament and confidence

We pray a psalm at every Mass. But we never hear a complete psalm — the lectionary producers having taken out the verses which might in some way be problematic — where the psalmist seems to be fed-up, fearful or obsessed with enemies and troubles. The psalmist holds no emotion back from his prayer. Sometimes his/her thoughts turn violent. Our picked over Mass versions leave us with just the cheery bits. Were we to hear each psalm in its entirety, we might finish up scratching our heads. So I've composed my own psalm here (yes, we can do that) — holding nothing back from God. Notice I said we. Try it. No judging. God doesn't think less of us for our confusion, doubts, anxieties, distractions. In fact, I expect God would welcome it. It means we take God seriously.

There is the light at the east end of the street

rising and poised perfectly

through a tunnel of sycamores —

prototype of anything else

we might call golden globe.

But it's the mind-darkness 

that terrifies,

depresses me, 

O God —

our paradise planet

born of light,

parched and withered,

starved and weary.

The list of extinctions grows.

And it is our own fault.

Astounded —

that despite the signals

we've failed to take the hint!

Silly us,

to call anything, the war to end all wars,

when even now

   theaters,

   nurseries, 

   maternity hospitals,

   parks, farms, forests, 

   schools and rural villages

are disappeared by missile-strikes

ordered by a dark mind,

yet another incarnation of evil.

The new clouds are smoke clouds,

poison

ash-clouds,

rising up,

Vesuvius-like

from cities wasted.

Hear my pro-life lament:

  for the baby girl blown up in her stroller,

  the four year old boy dead and

  undiscovered under fifteen stories

  of crumbled cement and steel,

  the family running with their little luggage and their cat crate,

  the old man targeted from the sky while tending his bees.

I hold this sorrow,

even sorrow for you, God of Light.

Could it be that we've robbed you of omnipotence,

   who called the oak trees and ferns,

   the giraffes and frogs into being,

   who opened the sea for freedom's sake,

   who gave new sight to the blind man,

   who left behind Turin's shroud.

So unconscious,

we've insisted you go away.

Have you left us? 

Gone to another planet?

Perhaps a safer, non-weaponized world?

We have a telescope now that sees back to the origins of light —

   are you there, Holy One?

Have we frightened you away by our political party cult-darkness,

   who elect ignoble souls, 

   cheer them on,

   hooting,

   fist pumping the air,

   chanting their slogans,

   ignoring their lies,

   wearing their colors,

   waving their banners —

   ridiculous in our shame.

Do you remember the night,

when I brought the eight girls 

who had done terrible things

to pray before the myrrh-streaming icon

of the Mother of God?

And the gentle priest said,

"The icon is dry tonight,

so let's bless only

the children who are here."

And when my group approached the icon

it started to pour scented oil,

flooding off the bottom edge.

And the little acolytes rushed

to stretch the

red cloth to keep it from

landing on the floor. 

The poor girls didn't notice,

but I did,

wide-eyed for the faith-stirring sign.

But the devil is a spoiler,

and we need the autocrats of power-love,

and the pillocks of money-love

and their celebrators 

to see,

to inhale this too.

Show yourself again, O Blessed One,

whose omnipotence is love;

hearts have grown cold;

and the forests are on fire.

Compose your own psalms ~ you know you can do that, right?

More often than not, the one hundred and fifty psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures are attributed to King David. Maybe. But even though the word psalm means praises on a stringed instrument, they are often long, whiney laments about un-named troubles (maybe bad health) or requests to seek divine vengeance upon troublemakers and unholy people. Often the psalmist wallows in self-pity and only in the last moment does he seem to snap out of his misery long enough to praise God.

For 2000 plus years we've been praying somone else's words. Nothing wrong with that but maybe it's past time we started composing our own psalms. What about it? I'd suggest we wouldn't be writing psalms to replace David's. No one would even need to know you're a psalm composer, so there's no need to worry about the judgments of others.

My seminary psalm course professor was a noted academic. He never seemed to consider that as priests we'd be praying psalms with people at every Mass for the rest of our lives. So here I am, about 47 years later wanting to write, A Psalm of Stephen. I knew a priest who every day wrote what he called his, angry psalm. He was in AA and I expect he needed to write his angry psalms to help him stay the gentle, light-hearted man I knew him to be. But a psalm can reflect any emotion. It does seem to me however that even an angry or sad psalm needs to have some expression of gratitude and love for God who deserves our confidence. 

So, I'd invite you to join me. What motivated the psalm below that I've composed myself? I was in a public garden and standing for mesmerized minutes at the edge of two large sections of Mountain Mint, a remarkable native pollinator plant which was covered with hundred of pollinators: seemingly every kind and size bee, wasp, moth and butterfly. They were so distracted in their grazing, getting stung didn't even enter my mind. Here's a few pointers if you'd like to set out with me:

• Avoid religious sounding language; Jesus spoke plainly.
• Maybe begin with something that's moved you deeply recently.
• Remember in high school — simile and metaphor?
• Avoid rhyming lines — it's too much work and makes things sound stilted.
• Do I need permission? Baptism is your ticket. 
• But CAN I do this? Of course you can. But many of us have been shutdown in one way or another. Find or re-discover your voice. No excuses.
• Avoid words that are over-used, powerless, or that say too little. Stretch your vocabulary.
• Father Antony Bloom said, "Don't pray until you feel something." Write from the heart.
• There are four basic emotions: happy, sad, angry, afraid. Everything else will fall into these categories. A psalm can include any/all of these feelings.
• Can I invent words? Absolutely. I think I may have invented two in my psalm here.
• What about punctuation and grammar? God is not a teacher with a red pencil

I want to sing my own song,

a new song

to the God of endless imagination,

who brings beauty into being

and everything alive,

all seasoned and cyclic,

and me —

meditated and still,

locked-on before this brilliance.

Here I am before these mountains of Mountain Mint,

July-blooming,

square-stemmed,

silver-leaved,

galax-ied flowers, soft lavender-pink,

slow to bloom,

creating anticipation.

Here I am in this warming air,

by bright morning sun,

mint covered in the diversity of  bees —

striped bumbled bees,

honey bees, 

almost micro bees,

small wasps,

moths and butterflies.

But there's nothing to be afraid of, 

they're oblivious to my presence,

drinking up the nectar-gift —

the apiarist wondering if

this year's honey-harvest will have a minty taste.

And as the plants gently sway

for countless translucent wings in motion,

is the air vibrating;

do I really hear soft buzzing?

And while I'd do nothing to confound an inquisitor,

I have to wonder,

(and laughing as I do),

is this what it is to touch your pulsing heart,

O God?

Psalm Verse Asking for Peace

 

Olive ~ Symbol of peace

Come, consider the works of the Lord

the redoubtable deeds he has done on the earth.

He puts an end to wars over all the earth;

the bow he breaks, the spear he snaps.
He burns the shields with fire.

Be still and know that I am God,

supreme among the nations, supreme on the earth.!

Psalm 45: 9-11

Psalm 41 ~ A Poetic Rendition

 

Ukrainian mass grave ~ "a wound to the very Heart of Love."

Here is Nan Merrill's poetic rendition of Psalm 41. She has re-presented the psalms in a way that connects the ancient text to a contemporary mind. She does not suggest her expansive translations preclude the traditional text, but that those translations be kept at hand. Might I suggest reading the psalm twice: once in the larger font and then perhaps a second time with my own thoughts in the smaller italic font.

Who among us hears the cry of the poor? (At the end of Mass a man said to me, "I'm so sick of hearing about them — the poor.")

How many open their hears (Is my heart closed to anyone? Am I okay with that?)

and heed the Call? — (Capital C. God is a call, an invitation,)

The plight of the world is a wound

to the very Heart of Love,

a scar on our own souls. (The way we treat our world wounds God's heart.)

Blessed are those who lovingly respond!

The Friend, who knows all hearts, (But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said, "Why do yo entertain evil thoughts in our hearts?" Mt. 9:4)

will remember their kindness. (We often think God remembers only our faults and sins.)

they will know joy, peace, and deep

fulfillment working in harmony

with all who serve toward healing

the needs of this troubled world. (Lovely — to work with God in healing our world.)

"As for me, I prayed, 'O Soul-Mender, (Can you name for yourself, God as soul-mender?)

be gracious unto me.

For I have been deaf to those in need; (Are we tired of hearing about Ukraine already?)

my fears paralyzed me. (Are we afraid of justice because it might mean I may have to do without something?)

I am bound like a prisoner held

in my own house,

alone and abandoned.

Each fear I push away or deny (Pushing fear away: like the little monkey with his hands over eyes and ears.)

rises up with power;

feeling anxious, lies and deceit

take the place of truth.

I can hide no longer; my confusion,

the way I blame others, (We learn to blame others at a very early age.)

have turned even my friends away.'

O Divine Healer, help me face the fears

that threaten to overwhelm; (Are there fears I'd call overwhelming?)

without your guidance, they will

bring about what I most fear! (O Christ our Savior, shed your light upon the path I have to tread.)

I am on my knees asking forgiveness; (The desert monk kneels to write his sins in the sand.)

give me strength to turn all (This is true religion, that each day I change if even in some small way.) 

that separates me from You

into love and kindness. (The Dali Lama says that  religion is kindness. Are we forgetting kindness?)

You who are Unconditional Love, You

do not judge our weaknesses;

raise me up, that I may be renewed (This is what Eucharist is supposed to do for us! Yes?)

in body, mind, and soul! (There are folks who don't want God's love to be unconditional. They usually feel this way about the weaknesses of others.) 

"By this I know that You have

graciously forgiven me; (The desert monk returns later to see the sins he'd written in the sand have been blown away.)

fear did not triumph over me,

though my heart was broken open

so the light could enter in. (A broken heart can become a source of compassion for others)

You upheld me, filled me with integrity, (Can I name a time when I've felt God holding me up?)

and opened my heart to the poor. (I asked a man who was struggling to examine his conscience, "Do you do anything for the poor?" "Not much," he honestly and quickly answered.)

Blessed be the Beloved, loving Presence (Someone complained about calling God Beloved. Why? Not manly?)

to all hearts open to Love,

from everlasting to everlasting!

Amen. (Dag Hammarskjold wrote: "People often thing that the basic command of religion is 'Do this!' or 'Don't do that!' It isn't. It's look and wonder! learn to give attention to the world around  you.")

Psalm 16 ~ True Happiness

"Love...holding me in its power."

Nan Merrill (+2010) has written a book titled: Psalms for Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness. Here is a brief review of the book giving a sense of what the author has done for us. 

The Psalms are the oldest prayers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. There are 150 of them, and they were written for a variety of occasions. They remain popular as devotional resources because they speak to us cogently about the human condition. The Psalms express the hopes and fears, the gratitude and the anger, the joy and the sadness that we all experience at one time or another.

This paperback is the Tenth Anniversary Edition of Nan Merrill's Psalms for Praying, and the author has made some revisions. She has recast all 150 Psalms in poetic form and sees them as a companion to use with those in the Hebrew Scripture. Merrill hopes that these prayers will also be used to awaken us to love, silence, peace, wholeness, and acts of justice, mercy and compassion. In times of war, these cries from the heart become even more poignant. 

Here is the author's poetic recasting of Psalm 16 — A Psalm of Confidence and True Happiness. My own verse-by-verse thoughts follow.

1 Remain ever before me

     O Living Presence,

   for in You am I safe.

2You are my Beloved; in You

   and through You I can do all things.

3 I look to those who are at one

     with You and learn

   from them of your ways;

4 My delight increases each time

   I sense your Presence within me!

Songs of praise well up from my heart!

5 Love is my chosen food, my cup,

   holding me in its power.

6 Where I have come from,

Where're I shall go,

   Love is my birthright,

     my true estate.

7 I bless the Counselor who guides my way;

   in the night also does my heart instruct me.

8 I walk beside the Spirit of Truth;

   I celebrate the Light.

I bask in the Oneness of All!

9 Thus my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;

I shall not be afraid,

  nor fall into the pit of despair;

For in Love's presence I know the fullness of joy.

10 You are my Beloved and, in You

   will I live forever!

Verse 1:  A purist might say, "The traditional psalm doesn't use the term "Living Presence." OK, but have I ever named God for myself, or do I only use the words of other people? Do we use the word God so easily that it's almost a throwaway word? Here Nan Merrill has thoughtfully given God a new name — "O Living Presence."  The little sound-word "O" expresses wonderment. In a scary, dangerous world, I can feel safe in this sure Presence.

Verse 2: Here again, the poet-author gives God another name. "Beloved.." And when I live with and in the Beloved, not only do I feel safe, but I feel encouraged and strengthened. Indeed, "I can do all things." How fitting for folks who feel disempowered, degraded, ignored, self-doubting, insecure.

Verse 3: The psalmist is a communal person. We don't live spiritually in isolation. "I look to those who are at one with You." Who might these be? The saints, surely. But also the un-canonized holy and good ones I have met along the way. 

Verse 4: "Delight increases within me." Does the word delight express my personal religious/spiritual world? How does this delight in God's Presence find expression in my life?

Verse 5: This is interesting — I think the author has again re-named God. Here she calls God simply Love. God who is Love, is like food and drink to me. A necessity. My sustenance. This Love is a power which holds me. I'm thinking of the icon of the Cambrai Mother of God above (c.1340) holding the Infant Christ who is squirming and climbing up the front of the Holy Mother pulling on her veil and holding her chin with his right hand. The icon's unspoken message seems gives expression: This is how you are loved—God is climbing all over us or climbing over all the obstacles of history (global and personal) to get to us in love. 

Verse 6: "Where I have come from...Where'er I go..." Of course, I think of my parents, but I also remember when I was in my forties and went back to the Bronx to stand by and touch the marble Baptismal font where my parents brought me as a newborn. We have all come from a Baptismal font as the siblings of Jesus. And again, the trillion, trillion, trillion coincidences that have brought me to today and just as wondrously to tomorrow for the rest of my life.

Verse 7: A traditional translation would say, "God who gives me counsel." Nan Merrill says more simply and as a way of giving God a new name, "I bless the Counselor." And what a lovely thought, that this good Counselor instructs my heart even in the night while I sleep. But the "night" can also be the world's darkness. Even then, God teaches me how to go. Am I a good heart-learner?

Verse 8: "The spirit of Truth." But truth isn't just new information about God, something that's accomplished because I've read the right books or listened to the latest expert. The truth is the truth of God's love seen in Christ. I want to live that kind of authentic life—my own unique life lived fully as Christ lived his. That's what it is to live in the Light.

Verse 9:You see here — the godly way is a way of gladness and rejoicing. It dispels fear which gives birth to despair, anger, resentment, hatred, even violence and wars. Here again, the author calls God simply, "Love." And this love gives cause for full joy. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said, "There is no such thing as a sad Christian." 

Verse 10: God again is called "Beloved." Maybe that's the promise of eternity, living forever in love — given and received. Isn't that what we all long for — to love and to be loved?

Psalm 89 ~ Before the Mountains...

 

These now and again reflections on the psalms might be called a gloss. A dining room table, a runway model's hair, a car's wax finish can be said to be glossy. Here, a gloss is a kind of over voice which ponders the deepening spiritual meaning of the psalms for living today. But we must be prepared as the psalms are not easy listening, white bread, a walk in the park. They can take us to a place where, left to ourselves, we might prefer not to go.

 Verse 1: "O Lord, you have been our refuge from one generation to the next." Ancestry/Genealogy sites are a "dime a dozen" these days. But for all the information they may yield about where we come from, do they tell a faith story? Someone or something has brought me to faith — from one generation to the next, right up to today. Do I know my faith story? And not a few of us have come to faith by way of others who were threatened because they believed. I may well have come to faith because grandparents and great grandparents (and folks before them) persevered in believing, God is my refuge.

Verse 2: "Before the mountains were born...you are God, without beginning or end." Our sense of time is tiny. As the world goes, the United States is a very young nation. We don't get high marks for knowing even the history of our own country let alone the events of the world. Still, God has been God before there were mountains; before the earth was formed. And God will be God long after our little planet wastes away (by our own doing?) and its sun burns out. 

Verse 3: "You turn man back to dust..." And God is God despite our age-denying serums and surgeries. God calls the shots. It's God's call when I return to the dust. It is said that the person who will live to age one hundred and fifty, has already been born. How long do we think we can dodge death? Do I really want to live that long?

Verse 4: "To your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday, come and gone, no more than a watch in the night." That is, the way God sees things, our lives are the length of a night-shift. 

Verses 5 and 6: "You sweep men away like a dream, like grass which springs up in the morning and by evening withers and fades." Tsunamis, accidents, hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, massacres, can sweep people away. But I don't think God is behind any of that. Much of our swift demise is our own fault. Even if climate changes are part of a natural cycle, surely how we live today is only accelerating and intensifying the changes which are bringing about the death of the world's poorest people. Put a battlefield grade weapon in the hands of a crazed 18 year old and unspeakable things may well happen.  Life is fragile. We want to think we should live to a ripe old age. But there are no guarantees to that end.

Verses 7-11: "We are destroyed in your anger...who understands the power of your anger and fears the strength of your fury?" That's not a Christian view. Does God strike us down in furious anger? I don't think so. Maybe we project our own furious anger on to God. We want God to be as angry as we are.  Even so, we're so enthralled with entertainment, I imagine that if God's flaming apocalyptic angel appeared over the nation's capitol to take the country in hand, there'd be people rushing out to make a video of it — a selfie with the sword-wielding angel. I've seen priests holding phone-cameras in the air during the consecration at Lourdes or at a pope's Mass. We've lost something.

Verse 12: "Make us know the shortness of our life that we may gain wisdom of heart." But are we teachable? Has there been a loss of docility? Google University. Notice the psalmist asks for wisdom of heart. Pope Francis said recently, "We're not supposed to be encyclopedias." I sense the pope was suggesting the learning we need to attend to is learning of the inner life. Soul-learning. I met a man who boasted of having read the entire eight hundred and forty eight page Catechism of the Catholic Church. When he finished his boast I asked, "And?" He had no response, as if reading that huge tome was somehow an end in itself.

Verse 13: "Lord, relent!" Some Catholics are waiting for God to do the big smack down — "Punish those who are not like me." Moscow Patriarch Kirill claims that Russia has a right to invade Ukraine because of the West's "gay parades." But it isn't that way. "Show pity to your servants." God has shown pity to the world already. God's pity is Jesus Christ. Truth be told, there are not a few Christians for whom that thought would never occur. Or they think pity means soft. God's pity is God's enduring love. Through the world's most awful sins — the sin of reducing Ukraine to dust, the sins that make for the massacre of classrooms filled with young children — God's love endures. If we think it's not possible, we might witness the enduring love of the mother whose son is on death row.

Verse 14: "In the morning, fill us with your love; we shall exult and rejoice all our days." Here, the psalmist comes around. Something shakes him out of his running resentments. "In the morning fill me with your love." That's a poetic way of saying, we are always beginning again. The manifest love of God is more meaningful than all else  — it fills his days with happiness. 

Verse 15: "Give us joy to balance our affliction for the years when we knew misfortune." That is, I can rehearse all the old tales, the injustices I've suffered, the failures, the slights, the stupid mistakes, the being misunderstood or cheated, the heart ache, and over all is the joy of knowing how loved I am by God. How is it that my life is of such value to God, that God would do anything (indeed, has done everything) so as not to lose me. Yet again, gratitude is the heart beat of the Christian spiritual life — not ticking off boxes on a list of right dogma, rules and ritual.

Verse 16: "Show forth your work to your servants." But showing forth God's work is what WE should be doing. The churches of North America and Europe are emptying — fast. Some Christians blame everyone and everything else for the hemorrhaging. But is there something we should have been doing all along? Some works we should have been revealing? Is there something about our own hypocrisy that has resulted in so many — especially young people — turning off? What of Christ's Gospel have we missed? Is God necessarily shown glory because we've built splendid churches? I'd suggest lives and minds, changed and transformed by Christ show forth God's work. Truth be told, Christians often think and act like everyone else. Pope Francis recently spoke of priests who live like pagans. Are the media elites the ones who really form minds in this country? Are they the new high priests?

Verse 17: "Give success to the work of our hands." That doesn't mean, "Oh God, help us win this war," as holy water is sprayed over the rockets, jets, bombs and camouflaged soldiers, or, "Oh God, help us to make the diocesan campaign a success." Rather, Oh God, that our minds would be freed of the cultural-political stupidity that is taking us down — the propaganda of advertisers and the talking TV heads who spew awful lies. Give success to our growing up. Give success to our maturing. Give success to our transformation. St. Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is the human person fully alive." Wow, what does that mean? I know someone who day-trades online, pleased to announce (fully conscious) of his war-profiteering. "Give success to the work of our hands," that is, re-create us that we would live authentic, beautiful lives, as Christ has lived his.

Psalm 39 ~ God drew me from the miry clay

 

One author titles this psalm, A Psalm of Thanksgiving and Further Plea for Help. That's because it's actually two psalms that have somehow gotten attached to each other. That shift happens around verse 12. For our purposes here we're only hearing and considering verses 1-12. After verse 12 the psalmist switches into his complaint mode.

Side note: if the only contact we have with the psalms is at Mass between the readings, we'll never hear a complete psalm, as the whiney and vengeful bits have been eliminated. Perhaps just as well as they can be full of a negative energy and each day dishes up enough of that. The first twelve verses of Psalm 39 are extraordinarily tender standing beautifully on their own.

Verses 1-2: The psalmist repeats the word waited twice — "I waited, I waited for the Lord." I like that. Instead of saying, "I waited for the Lord a really long time," repeating the word waited seems to have emotional content. We can feel his urgency.

This translation then says the Lord has stooped down to me. Another translation says, "the Lord inclined to me." Hmm. "Stooped down" — I have the image of the great God of creation getting down, bending low over us like a good parent or teacher. Isn't it a tender scene to see someone get down low on eye level instead of talking above him/her. 

This sense of God stooping down to each of  us also suggests that God has noticed us in the first place. I ask young people who have created their own vision of God, "Does your God know and care that you exist?" 

And in this getting down low, God hears our cry. God listens. God is with us on an emotional level. I'd suggest that God's listens to more than just our words, but God listens to the cry of the heart which is often unspoken.

Verse 3: Here the psalmist give us an indication of his plight. He feels as if his life is stuck in a deadly pit. Miry clay is essentially mud. A car can get stuck in the mud, but a human like can get stuck too, yes? Stuck in resentments, prejudice, addiction, fear, despair, regret. A mind can get stuck in ignorance, even stupidity. But then notice that the psalmist seems to catch himself, as if he's got lost in his complaint and then returns to the great personal truth, that God has pulled him out of it, put him on his feet, back on a sure path. God restores. Can I name that for myself: that even after a long waiting, God puts me back together.

Verse 4:  God has put a new song into the psalmist's mouth. A new song. It's a song of praise. And it's his own song — a poetic way of saying "Through all of my troubles, my love of God; my praising of God is refreshed within me."  The psalmist hopes this refreshed praising of God will be contagious. God is essential for him. Do I trust God? "I trust this brand, I trust the news that comes to me through this channel,  I trust my doctor, I trust my finance guy." Maybe I've gone over to the rebels (as the psalmist suggests). A Russian friend told me after the Soviet collapse, people started flocking back to the Russian Orthodox Church, "Oh, they've just switched their political party," she said. Now in the United States we hear the new term, "Christian Nationalism." Not good: political party and nation as god.

Verse 6: What a wonderful verse! The psalmist has put away all his woes and is overflowing with his observation of God's wonders. "God has given us two books; the first is the book of nature, the second is the biblical word," Father Alexander Men taught. There are 150 psalms. I'd suggest we can all compose our own praise-psalm. We could call it Psalm 151.

Verses 7-8: The psalmist speaks directly to God, "You don't want sacrifices and offerings." But many of us were taught, "Offer it up." Hmm. Maybe. But might that cliché have also been a way to silence any complaint. God asks only for the inner spiritual way of an open ear. What about the ear of my heart? What might that entail?

Verse 8: It must be important, he finds another way of saying it to bring home the point. God wants to hear only one thing only from: "Here I am." It is an offering of self. Christ is the perfect pattern of this self-gift. 

Verses 9-12:  "I delight in your law." Does God elicit real delight in me? Do I feel it (from the depth of my heart)?  Many people these days, especially among the young, say, "I'm more spiritual than religious." Let's not dismiss them. What are they getting at? We can recite the Creed and participate in a church function and never look within. The word religion comes from the Latin, relegio-ere which means to reflect, reread or to consider. 

Carl Jung's theory is that we are born with a religious impulse or instinct. When I was a young boy one rainy Sunday after the last Mass in the school auditorium,  I was part of a little procession as the Blessed Sacrament had to be returned to the church. The priest carried the ciborium hidden under a humeral veil as I walked ahead in my altar boy's cassock and surplice while ringing a set of handbells indicating that the Sacrament was passing. All along the way, men genuflected and took off their hats, women in dresses knelt on the curb with little children. Only a felt-need, an inner impulse or instinct would bring people to their knees in the rain, not a rule.

"I delight in your law." Does that mean just reciting, believing and obeying church rules? I don't think so. There is another law — one that is written in my heart. It is the law over my own being: that God imagined my existence. That God took a moment to create me, to breath God's life into me. That God has a great hope for me. That I belong to God who wants me to persevere in knowing God in the heart-to-heart relationship God dreams of. That's much bigger than anything found in a parish bulletin or dutifully following the rules.  Maybe this is what the young person means when he/she says, "I'm more spiritual than religious." May I encounter something of this myself today. Has the religious impulse been knocked out of me? God's merciful love.

Psalm 12 ~ Prayer at the Front Door of Lent

This is a short psalm of only six verses. But in those few lines we get a good idea of how this psalmist relates to God. He is an anxious fellow, a hand-wringer. He even has some real issues with God. I find psalmists to be whiney much of the time. This fellow is no exception. Maybe if we're really honest we might see something of ourselves in his complaint.

1 How long, O Lord, will you forget me?

How long will you hide your face?

2 How long must I bear grief in my soul,

this sorrow in my heart day and night?

How long shall my enemy prevail?

3 Look at me, answer me, Lord my God!

Give light to my eyes lest I fall asleep in death,

4 lest my enemy say: 'I have overcome him';

lest my foes rejoice to see my fall.

5 As for me, I trust in your merciful love.

Let my heart rejoice in your saving help:

6 Let me sing to the Lord for his goodness to me,

singing psalms to the name of the Lord, the Most High.

Verses 1-3: A psalmist thinks of himself as a friend of God. Here he seems to think that gives him permission to be even rude. What presumption to think God is hiding God's face. He's exasperated and annoyed with God. If there's anything we can say about the God of the ancient Hebrews is that this God fights for them. But this psalmist has either forgotten that or is angry he's not feeling God's salvation more personally and on time! "How long....how long?"  He's made God as small as his own little world.

Verse 4: I get the feeling that the psalmist is trying to blackmail God. It's as if he's saying, "You know, if I fall to my enemies, they will think that YOU are weak and can't be relied upon for help." I don't think God is bothered by this tricky thinking.

Verses 5,6: Then, as is usually the case with a whiney psalmist, he comes around in the end and gives God the thanks that is God's due. We hope he means it.

But you know what, and this really matters, maybe we do have real enemies, those who might even have wished us harm or who have been trouble makers in our lives over the years. But Jesus makes it clear what we're supposed to do with them: We are to pray for them. Wish them well. Wish them what they need for salvation.

But the other and more serious enemies we have are within us. "You're your own worst enemy" we say, or has been said to us. We burden ourselves with our wrong-headed thinking, by the foolishness we listen to and make our own, the little (or not so little) Christ-displacing cults we follow, the stupidity we defend. Another Lent begins. Another Lent to kind of get it right. But I'm getting older; I don't have forever. I will approach this Lent as if it is my last. 

Psalm 139 ~ A Closer Look

 

It's said that sunflowers keep circling around during the daylight hours to face the sun. It isn't really so much that as when young plants are growing, they tend to face east to maximize their exposure to the sun's energies. So a whole field of sunflowers, wonderfully faces east — the direction of the sun's rising. 

Back on June 25, 2017 I did a reflection of Psalm 139 here — all twenty-four verses. Here I've pulled out only seven lines from the psalm — maybe the best parts we might use for a morning or evening prayer. The whole psalm is light-seeking.

 

1 O Lord, you search me and you know me.

2 You yourself know my resting and my rising;

you discern my thoughts from afar.

3 You mark when I walk or lie down;

you know all my ways through and through.

13 For it was you who formed my inmost  being,

knit me together in my mother's womb.

14 I thank you who wonderfully made me;

how wonderful are your works which my soul knows well!

23 O search me, God, and and know my heart.

O test me, and know my thoughts.

24 See that my path is not wicked,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Verse 1: "Search me and know me." We're familiar with the expressions Keep a low profile or Keep your head down. We may have life-bits we'd prefer to keep secret, or have forgotten all about. But God knows us. God searches us out, looking to know us even in the places we keep protectively hidden or are lost to memory. This divine search to know is born of love.

Verse 2: Many Christians think God is only interested in our productive, do-ing, busy time. But here the psalmist tells us God is interested in our rest time, our dream state. God is like a parent who sits watching over a sleeping infant in a crib. It's that tender.

God knows our thoughts from afar, but not afar because God is beyond the beyond, but because our thoughts can be poor, anxious, distracted, silly, despondent or "half-baked." Then softly, God seems to call to us, "Come back, come back." 

Verse 3: "You mark when I walk."  Medicine Net suggests aiming for 10,000 steps a day, while the average American walks between 3000 and 4000 steps — considered "low activity."  We're an unhealthy nation in not a few ways. Maybe the point is a poetic one — God is not an acquaintance or fleeting presence.

"You know all my ways." Our cultural ways? Our cults of personality? Cult is worship. Essentially our worship (putting first) personalities in politics, entertainment, sports, media. There are even personality cults in religion — the prelates or media persons who uphold my religious brand or flag. God doesn't miss a trick. 

Verse 13: "You formed my inmost being." Christianity is a spiritual way. "You knit me together." And knitting can be a complex undertaking. It is an invitation to do our inner work. Don't even go there, some people say. It's a kind of threat to leave me untouched. "Let sleeping dogs lie." Innermost place can be the place where old resentments lie, where old trauma-wounds fester. I know a woman who recently broke up with a man when she discovered how untreated and potentially menacing his childhood trauma remains. "Ah, get over it," or "suck it up," doesn't work. God made the inmost being. The psalmist acknowledges this deeply, calling that inner self a wonderful work of God. It deserves respect and attention. 

Verse 23: There's that word "search" again. But this time it's "search my heart." Why? So God might root out all the negativity that can take up so much space. Oh, this toxic bitterness and raging fear that's filling the news time and flowing into Christian hearts. Many people don't even see it or hear it in themselves. Or they justify it and think it's godly. God, search my heart and free me!

The psalmist says, "test me." But a teacher doesn't test students to find out what they DON'T know so much as to see what they DO know. I grew up always on the lookout for sin and sin's "near occasions." Kind of a negative take on religious/spiritual living. I want to invite God to test me to see where there's mercy, justice and kindness in my life and to grow me up in these things. Jesus will echo this, reminding us that thoughts originate in our hearts. 

Verse 24: "See that my path is not wicked." That could mean something like, "See to it, God, that I stay on a right path." OR it could be a kind of announcement telling God to be sure to see what's already true. Your call. 

But then the psalm's last line: "Lead me..."  Here's  a little video of Velma Willis and her wonderfully faith-filled congregation-friends singing the Gospel Hymn: "Lead me, Guide Me." Check this out! Can you feel it?  Oh, blessed Lord Jesus, preserve us from bored prayer and worship. Bishop Anthony Bloom (+2003) says, "Don't pray until you feel something." These folks understand! Do I have any of this in me? 

Psalm 83 ~ Love and Desire for God's Temple

Psalm Fifty ~ A Psalm of Heart-Turning

The Holy Face ~ Flemish School ~ 1500-1515

Click on the image of The Holy Face to hear Psalm 50 read, followed by an audio reflection.

3 Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness.

In your compassion blot out my offence. 

4 O wash me more and more from my guilt

and cleanse me from my sin.

5 My offenses truly I know them;

my sin is always before me.

6 Against you, you alone, have I sinned;

what is evil in your sight I have done.

That you  may be justified when you give sentence

and be without reproach when you judge

7 O see, in guilt I was born,

a sinner was I conceived.

8 Indeed you love truth in the heart;

then in the secret of my heart teach me wisdom

9 O purify me, then I shall be clean;

O wash me, I shall be whiter than snow.

10 Make me hear rejoicing and gladness,

that the bones you have crushed may thrill.

11 From my sins turn away your face

and blot out all my guilt.

12 A pure heart create for me, O God,

put a steadfast spirit within me.

13 Do not cast me away from your presence, 

nor deprive me of your holy spirit.

14 Give me again the joy of your  help;

with a sprit of fervour sustain me,

15 that  may teach transgressors your ways

and sinners may return to you.

16 O rescue me, God my helper,

and my tongue shall ring out your goodness.

17 O Lord, open my lips

and my mouth shall declare your praise.

18 For in sacrifice you take no delight

burnt offering from me you would refuse

19 my sacrifice, a contrite spirit.

A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.

20 In your goodness, show favour to Zion'

rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

21 Then you will be pleased with lawful sacrifice,

(burnt offerings wholly consumed),

then you will be offered young bulls on your altar.

The Grail Translation ~ 1963

Psalm 16 ~ A Good Man Prays

 

The Sunflower follows the sun. We might hear echoes of that turning of the heart in Psalm 16 here. Click on the Sunflower to hear the psalm read.

Verses 1-3: A Catholic may have a hard time understanding the first verses of this psalm. It sounds like the psalmist is boasting. Growing up, I remember hearing, "Don't be so sure of yourself" when someone expressed some positive insight about oneself. That positive thought might be considered pride. Some folks have heard this so often they are unable to accept a simple compliment, let alone speak as confidently of himself/herself as the psalmist does.

This fellow feels confident enough that he invites God to look at his life inside out — in his heart, in his sleep when he cannot pretend. "Test me." It's almost a dare or taunt.

Verse 4-9: But with the second part of verse 4 something shifts and the psalmist  reveals that he knows the source of his boast is not his doing, but God's. We might identify this awareness as grace. Grace is not a commodity to stored up like covid era paper products, but what God shares of himself with us — God's energies. 

The psalmist says in effect, "I've stayed far from violence because of your word. Not my own path but your path. I'm here (maybe feeling a little lonely) confident that you (God) will hear me. Display your love, God. Take me by your right hand."

This fellow is poor and needy after all. He knows he can't do it alone. "Guard me - hide me" from anything that would attack me. He doesn't identify any attacker by name but we might imagine there are troublemakers in his life. He feels threatened by the circle of violent foes who want his undoing. Then, continuing for some verses, he describes the dangerous world he lives in and in which we live too.

Verse 10: Now the psalmist acknowledges there are people whose hearts are shut, who are arrogant, who are watching him. We might understand even better than he does.  Is there an inch of the nation that doesn't have a camera positioned on it. The practice helps to solve crimes for sure, but others don't like it. They feel there is something more sinister behind it. 

Verse 11: "...as if there are lions to claw." We live in a dangerous world - a wild world where people can say whatever they want to say about others online. We're constantly being invited to "review" people and products and to comment. A reputation can be destroyed on social media — a kind of wild clawing at people. The psalmist has his own understanding, and we have our own. 

Verses 13,14: Here the psalmist is feeling particularly needy and vulnerable. "Let your sword rescue my soul." His inner life feels threatened. His peace is gone, his inner stability and sense of security. What's happened to that happy, self-satisfied feeling about himself in the first verses? 

He asks to be rescued from people who only think about the present life — the people who care only about power and money. Evil things are often done to hold onto power and wealth — cheating, lies, theft, greed — even murder, violence, false imprisonment. The psalmist says he knows people hold on like this so they can hand their wealth off to their children. Some things never change, heh?

Verse 15: But then (and this happens in every psalm) there is a shift. We can almost feel the psalmist snapping out of his complaint and returning to God's love. "But as for me, I want to see your face and be filled." Isn't it interesting, with all his early boast, you'd think he'd need nothing more. But instead, when all is said and done, he feels empty and asks God to fill him.

Finally this: "...and be filled when I awake." He's not talking about waking up from his night's sleep but waking up from his own inner slumber, his negativity, his even bitter distraction, his own desiring to have and to win, perhaps to wake up from his fears and resentments. Then, when I wake up, I will see again how glorious and good you are, O God! We can all make that our prayer. Indeed, a whole comatose nation can make that prayer.

Psalm Two ~ Choosing

 

This photograph is of an early 17th century crucifix found in the Sanctuary of San Damiano in Assisi, Italy.  Thomas Merton writes of his early days in the monastery, where hand lettered signs were all over the place, reminding the monk to be recollected. He said of the signs, "After you've passed them a once or twice, you don't even notice them." But you can't just breeze by this crucifix — arresting in its emotional beauty. 

This Feast of Christ the King is often celebrated in a triumphant way — rent a trumpeter for the Mass or service, pull out all the stops on the pipe organ to accompany a rousing rendition of To Jesus Christ our Sovereign King. But King-Jesus is not triumphant in any worldly way — he wears the fake crown of thorns on his head to make him look a crazed fool. So in love with earth-power—dictator-like leaders, consumer spending power — I'd suggest the Christians need to rethink this end-of-the-liturgical-year feast day. Big time!

God's power — revealed in the abused, crucified Jesus, is the power of committed love. So, here's the choice. It's the choice nations have before them. It's the choice each individual has to make: Where do I put my trust, my confidence? 

Psalm 2

The Second Psalm begins, "Why this tumult among the nations?"  Other translations ask, "Why do the nations rage?" or "Why do the nations conspire?" It's a line about the nations in the ancient world and, of course, about our own time and place?  It's always crisis time. The first psalm (introducing the collection of 150) says, "Happy indeed is the person who follows not the advice of the wicked, but whose delight is the law of the Lord and who ponders God's law day and night." And the last line of the second psalm (its partner) says essentially the same, "Happy are they who put their trust in God." 

There it is. In 150 ways, the psalms put this choice before us — do I put my trust in money, in my connections, in my stored up stuff, in the power-leaders we elect, in my country's military might and threat, in our greatness (whatever that means), in our so-called freedoms — or humbly and simply, in God? Of course, we can be propagandized and not even know how self deceived we are. We can wear and fly slogans and never consider what these things mean spiritually: In God we trust. One nation under God. For God and Country. A nation can use throw-away God-words and still have a weaponized, greedy, arrogant, hater-heart. 

But I'm not despairing. The Vatican nuncio (a pope's national representative) sent an online message to the bishops who met virtually this week. He laments how secularized the world has become by people who live as if God doesn't even exist. But I've known self-proclaimed Christians, and even been taught by or lived with clergy who I've wondered if they even believed. Yes! But then there are movements, not necessarily religious, that give evidence of great love—choosing love for the "crucified" people — the rejects, the wastes, the ones some might think should have been aborted. There's the rub, as they say. 

I saw this news item on TV recently and subsequently found it again as a YouTube video. It's about choosing love (and God is love, St. John tells us, heh?). The second psalm is about that choice — finding and trusting God in a world of raging, conspiring, turmoil. Whether we know it or not, frame it in religious language or not, doesn't really matters: The love matters.

Psalm 107 ~ "I will awake the dawn"

Here is a Carthusian monk standing above the Grand Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps. There are not many Carthusians in the world; their 11th century hermit-life is rigorous. Maybe this monk has been awake through the night singing psalms and now has gone up to "awake the dawn." We can join him in this psalm-prayer.

Verses 1-3:  The psalmist begins by proclaiming his heart-readiness as his life-disposition. He's so moved by the love of God, he's going to sing about it. In the movie, A Trip To Bountiful, elderly Carrie Watts lives in a small Houston apartment with her son, Ludie and chronically irritated daughter-in-law Jessie Mae. Carrie loves to sing hymns, which annoys Jessie Mae no end. "No hymn singing," Jessie Mae calls out from the other room when Carrie starts, We shall gather at the river. "You know how hymn singing makes me nervous." Do you ever sing hymns while you're working alone?

Then we hear the word awake, three times in three lines. "Awake my soul; awake lyre and harp; I will awake the dawn."  Jesus knew these psalm verses and often asks his disciples to wake up. Not a few Christians are in a kind of spiritual coma. They show up, never miss a Mass, go through the motions, maybe they can quote some popes and saints, remember a catechism line or two, say some prayers, but their inner lives are slumbering. They have no knowledge of God and themselves from experience, only what others have told them. Not the same thing. Do you ever have a sense of knowing something of God because you've experienced it? Someone might tell you to distrust that sense or knowing, but that's more likely because they're afraid of losing control over your inner life. Some things are best kept secret — like the Carthusian monk with his own senses, watching for the dawn's awakening.

Verses 4-6: Now the psalmist jumps from praise to thanks. Oh, I forget who said this, but, "If the only word you ever say to God is thank you...." you're onto it.  He's thanking God for God's love which is for all the nations and all the peoples - God's love (which is God's truth) is so vast it's above the skies. Maybe what we'd call outer space. And when he asks that God's glory would shine on earth, does he have in mind the beauty of the temple? Better yet, God's brightness shining through human lives lived well.

Verses 7-11: As is often the case, there is a sudden shift from praise and thanks to complaint and petition as he recites these verses containing mysterious place-names: Shechem, Succoth, Gilead, Manasseh, Ephraim, Judah, Moab, Edom, the Philistines. What are we to make of this? Some of these names reflect that the kingdom had been divided up. Others are the names of enemies. So, perhaps it is all a poetic way of say that God is Lord — Lord of love over all even in our divisions, disputes, challenges, upsets. 

Verse 12-14: Oh, here it is again, (how tiresome) asking God to march with our armies. There are clergy who still bless arsenals, soldiers, fighter jets and ships. We really have to grow up spiritually and put all of that away. If there's a battle, it's interior, in one's own inner place.  Hatred and resentment are always looking for a way in. That's the enemy. And while we "wake the dawn" we might also be wide awake to that inner invasion, and stop saying, "Oh, I don't hate anyone."  Hmm, maybe in our time and place, the other really dangerous spiritual enemy is the nation's depraved indifference. 

Anyway, true to form, the psalmist ends on a bright note — "With God we shall do bravely." Or perhaps the monk is thinking of another psalm - Psalm 29, verse 6b, "At night there are tears, but joy comes with dawn."

Psalm 73 ~ A Psalm of Disappointment and Hope

 

The psalmist has in mind the sacking of Jerusalem, when the population was carted off by the Babylonians in a second slavery. But clearly, what's most on his mind is the destruction of the Temple, which he describes in vivid terms.  The great doors of the temple were set upon by hatchet, axes and pickaxe. The sanctuary has been set on fire. The place razed and profaned. 

The other thing very much on the psalmist's mind is how God could seemingly just stand by and let it happen. Maybe to lay a little guilt trip on God, he spends a lot of time reminding God, based on their relationship in the past, that God should be much more proactive. He seems to say to God, "Your own house is destroyed and you seem to be doing nothing about it. What gives?"

When I'm working with a psalm I tend to look at a number of different translations. Sometimes the translations are very close, while at other times I wonder if I've got the numbering right, the translations seem to have nothing to do with each other. The why of those disparities doesn't especially interest me. I'm more interested in the discovery of a word that jumps out and offers me some new spiritual insight. A soul-quickening word.

The Grail Translation of verse 21 which I've read here, says: "Do not let the oppressed return disappointed." We can all identify with that verse as we all know disappointment in way way or another. The photograph above is of tombstones in a Jewish cemetery that have been pushed over and broken. We can imagine the disappointment of family members or cemetery visitors when they witnessed this oft repeated scene. We can be disappointed in people we don't even know. 

Failure in school - disappointing. A ruined trip or vacation - disappointing. When I was 11 years old the nun took me aside and told me that I had disappointed her. That was awful. Spouses and friends can disappoint. Parents and children can disappoint each other. Leadership in government can disappoint. Clergy and parishioners can disappoint each other.

In Psalm 73 the psalmist is disappointed because the temple has been torn down, the city plundered and the people taken away. But I'd suggest the psalm is still relevant, as there are other temples that are attacked, destroyed and left in ruins today. A disappointed dream or hope can be like a ruined temple. There are lots of synonyms for disappointed:

I'm disappointed in those who knew of the cleric's abuse-sins against young people and looked the other way, while he was promoted time and time again, all the way up to cardinal. 

I'm disheartened when I meet people who identify as pro-life, whose vision is noble, but very small — who support the science that proves the baby in the womb is human, but all other science is a hoax, especially climate change science, which is the most life-threatening science of all.

I feel depressed when I hear Christians excuse the foul behaviour of leaders. 

I'm discouraged by elected officials who use their office for self-interest, to make money or garner privileges for themselves, their families and those in their orbit. 

I'm disillusioned when I encounter Americans who refuse to make the simplest sacrifice to protect others, who have turned mask-wearing into a political statement. An UBER driver said, "You watch, after Election Day, everyone will take off their masks." Could we really have become so cynical?

I feel dispirited when Christian religionists reduce the Gospel of Jesus Christ to who's in and who's out; who's saved and who's lost. When dogma divides. 

I'm saddened by the signs of our devolution — persistent racism as ugly as anything I heard in the 1950's, our celebration of violence, arrogant pride, consumerist greed, disrespect and emboldened white supremacist nationalism. There's even news which seems to threaten and encourage menace and violence on Election Day. I'm saddened by that. 

I'm distressed when I see Christians wear the slogan, "Make America Great Again," while they have something in mind other than God's idea of greatness, which is justice, mercy, humility and love. Our spiritual evolution is very low. "Law and Order, law and order." But there's only one law and order - Christ's law and order, which is his law of love. Distressing that we don't make these connections.

I belong to a neighborhood shade tree commission. I meet people who won't allow a tree to be planted in front of their homes, on the little strip of grass along the sidewalk, because, they say, "When the tree gets big it can fall over on my neighbor's car and then I'll get sued." I'm troubled by self-centered fearful thinking. They'll be dead before the tree is big enough to fall on someone's car. 

I'm dismayed by what I consider to be an idolatrous protection of gun rights in our country — needing an AR-15? Even after an entire class of first graders was murdered?!  God will set that right some day.

I feel downhearted when people who should know better, weaken the fabric of our society, giving poor example by their shameless lies, name-calling, vanity and aggressive bullying. 

Like a ruined temple.

But towards the end, the psalmist predictably shifts gears, confident in God, moving into the future with God. "Arise, O God..." I want to pray that way too, but from a Christic heart ~

O Jesus, remember the night when you were born and the angels dazzled the shepherds with light and heavenly song. Arise, O Christ! Dazzle us again, entice us with a new heavenly song, drawing new depths of love out this dark night confounding us.

O Jesus, remember when you called Zacchaeus out of the tree and he came down to welcome you in conversion, repentance and welcome. Arise, O Christ! Call us out of the gnarled tree of our pride, down to where we can see rightly the lonely ones, the frightened ones, those running for their lives, to give them comfort and hope.

O Jesus, remember when you cleaned the diseased skin of the pathetic, outcast leper and sent him off happy and restored to right relationship. Arise, O Christ! Clean the national heart of  divisive hatred, all the blow-away-judging of who's different — who's not like me.

O Jesus, remember when you entered the upstairs room through locked doors at Easter and said to the apostles, "Peace be with you." Arise, O Christ! Pass through the shuttered doors of human minds, locked up in fear, aggression and even stupidity. Grow us up, Jesus, by your Resurrection Light.  Amen.

Overwhelmed? Psalm 3 ~ A confidence-restoring morning prayer

 

Here is the 6th century Greek Monastery of St. Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai in the Egyptian desert. Who knows, but perhaps this is the precise place where the Hebrews camped, while Moses went up to receive God's Law. I imagine the monks who live and pray here feel a great thrill when they chant this psalm written many centuries ago:

I cry aloud to the Lord, 

He answers from his holy mountain. 

Well, here's the mountain of which that third psalm speaks. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Verses 1-3: What a terrible predicament the psalmist is experiencing. We don't know exactly the circumstances, but this is one unhappy fellow. Trouble seems to be assailing him from all sides. How lonely he sounds. The little couplet of words, "How many" appears three times in the opening lines. He even knows what the gossips are saying about him: "He's without help or hope."

Verses 4-5: But as quickly as he has jumped into a lament in the opening verses, here, the psalmist shifts his emotional gears announcing his hope is in God. He calls a shield. A shield can preserve a life even if the arrows are flying out of the sky. He calls God his glory — the bright light that keeps him from being downcast, powerless, depressed. God is the brightness who enables him to lift up his head — to carry on. We've very likely met people like this over the years. 

Then the psalmist tells us that he cries aloud. A cry comes from a deep, inner, pained place — a suffering place. The ancient Israelites didn't believe that God's presence was confined to a mountain — though it certainly seems that this mountain (Sinai) was a place of particular encounter with the divine. The psalmist announces that God doesn't leave him alone in his lonely struggle, but that God answers. In Psalm 62:2 the psalmist declares, "In God alone is my soul at rest; my help comes from him. He alone is my rock, my stronghold, my fortress: I stand firm." 

Verses 6-7: I'm always glad when someone says: "I got a good night's sleep." Here, the psalmist tells us he's been sleeping quite well — not fitful, sporadic or worrisome. Contrast with the previous verses — who could do anything but toss and turn the night away with all those enemies? But better than the money-back-guarantee mattress, pillow or chemical sleep aid, the psalmist gives God the credit. 

I appreciate how sometimes the psalmist can't help himself and keeps returning to his complaint, "I will not fear even thousands of people ranged on every side." We know this — chewing on all the old memories and resentments, slights and offenses. Sometimes it's as if we're under a spell of some kind — "Just let it go" is impossible sometimes.

Verses 8-9: Here the psalmist lapses back into his resentment, asking God to "arise." Does the Christian recall Christ's bright rising out of our dark underworld (our unconscious place)?  But this psalmist fellow wants God to rise up to hit his enemies in the face, to knock out their teeth. But Jesus doesn't allow for this. I'm so disappointed when I encounter Christians who think this way. They often don't know themselves; don't hear themselves. Their lack of self-knowledge leaves me slack-jawed. Rather, by forgiveness, I am to ask Christ-God to rise up to heal my enemies, to restore them, to evolve them.  

Of course, (and we'd best start to get this if we're to take even baby steps into Christ's mind) — inner enemies might well be more dangerous than outer — hearts full of weapons and war, hating other people, buying into stupidity and lies, staying content in my bubble-world. Oh, this stuff is much more dangerous to the soul than an enemy talking smack about me.

Psalm 45 ~ God is my refuge and strength

Verse 1: Look at how this beautiful psalm begins - at once heaping up words to describe God as refuge, strength, helper. To take refuge in God is to trust God. God is reliable. Behind this trust is the belief that God's strength or power are in control: not our menacing enemies (inner or outer), not the troublemakers, nor the people who claim they have absolute power and authority. And God's rule is (as a better translation says) a refuge, strength and help for us. 

Verses 2-3: Now the psalmist spells things out a bit. Even if the earth should rock (is he thinking of an earthquake?) or the waters rage and foam (is he thinking of a category 4 hurricane?) no - much more dreadful than that. Remember, the ancient worldview envisioned the dry land as floating on and surrounded by a watery chaos and that the sky was held up in place by the mountains which served as pillars. So the psalmist is thinking, even if that entire cosmos fell apart, collapsed, (the sky is falling!) imploded, fell apart into utter awfulness—even then God would still be trustworthy. What about our own time? Rising temperatures which will have unthinkably dire consequences, storms of increasing destructive intensity, extinctions of plants and animal species, the creation of new expanses of poverty. And all of this while we have the nuclear capacity to utterly destroy our planet, how many times over now? Even then, the psalmist would say, God is with us as a trusted stronghold.

Verses 4-7: And while all this trouble unfolds, the psalmist imagines humankind will be shaken and in tumult. The words to describe the human collapse are the same words used to describe the cosmic trouble. Everything cosmic and human may be in motion—a kind of swirling trouble—yet the one thing that remains is God's reliably strong presence symbolized by the words, City of God.

This City of God is Jerusalem. And while the Jewish people never believed that God was locked in or confined to Jerusalem, the glorious temple on Mount Zion did house the particular presence of God. Health crisis, financial crisis, international crisis, sex abuse crisis, constitutional crisis: God is to be trusted.

Verse 8: This little refrain calling God, the Lord of hosts may be a reference to the Ark which contained the stone tablets of God's law—the Ark carried on poles and covered with golden cherubim - a kind of throne for God. But hosts can also means armies. Maybe Jerusalem was under attack by outside enemies. "The waters of the river that give joy." But there's no river flowing through Jerusalem, then or now. This is a poetic or metaphoric word—rivers bring assurance. The people will never starve or die of thirst if there's a river nearby. The river referenced here is meant to symbolize yet again, that God is a reliable, unfailing provider, even if the worst un-doing should take place. 

Verses 8-10: "Come, consider the works of the Lord," the psalmist invites. We might remember the apostle Philip inviting Nathanael to come and see. Here the psalmist is inviting us to come and consider how God has provided peace for his people. The words, "be still" don't mean take it easy but would be better translated: "Stop" - as in "Stop, put your weapons down—God is in charge." We're very far away from heeding that holy advice. 

Bottom Line: We live in a dangerous and scary world. And in that world, our presence of God is not a building, however splendid, but the person of Jesus Christ. He's the temple now. "God is with us" is his nickname (Matthew 1:23). To enter and live in the Kingdom which Jesus announces is to enter and live in dependence upon God - to find in God our place of security and trust, instead of in myself, what I own, our purported greatness and military might, the political party and those in positions of power and authority.  

Remember years ago, the new systems of positive thinking? It's not even that. The psalmist has his own version of the worst that can happen and we have ours. He invites us not to fear in the face of it. The angels of Easter morning announced it to the women: "You came here looking for death - he's risen - don't be afraid." This is the very great challenge put before people of faith today: Where do I put my trust?