Over the years I’ve had a problem with the “us versus them” voice of some psalms of the Book of Psalms. The division of humankind into the ‘righteous’ and the ‘wicked’ leaves me cold. Often I have wanted to recommend to the psalmist a session or two on a Jungian analyst’s couch to get in touch with the ‘shadow’. But, in other times, like the one through which we’re living in America, the psalmist’s poetry is without parallel in giving voice to what I feel. Psalm 10 is one of them.
Psalm 10 is a cry for help in a time of trouble when God seems far off, as though hiding, while “the wicked arrogantly persecute the poor” (v.1), but it also holds a conviction that the persecution is only for the moment. Why? Because, already, the arrogant “are trapped in the schemes they have devised” (verse 2).
Their ways are devious at all times;
Your judgments are far above out of their sight;
they defy all their enemies.
They say in their heart, “I shall not be shaken;
no harm shall come to me ever” (v.5).
….
Their mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and oppression;
under their tongue are mischief and wrong (v. 7).
….
They lurk in ambush in public squares
and in secret places they murder the innocent;
they spy out the helpless.
They lie in wait, like a lion in a covert,
they lie in wait to seize upon the lowly
they seize the lowly and drag them away in their net.
The innocent are broken and humbled before them;
the helpless fall before their power (vs. 7-9).
Sometimes the most poignant insights come from the psalmist’s couch. I read the Psalms most every day. I still remember what I’ve learned from Jung about my ‘shadow’ and the fear within me that paints ‘the other’ as wicked, wrong, or wretched. I know that the finger that accuses others often points back at my own sorry self. But the faith I was taught and still practice equally reminds me that anger has a rightful place when the lowly are broken, humbled, and dragged away in the net of the powerful. I remember the ‘righteous’ anger of Amos and the rest of the prophets. I remember Jesus.
I see my grandson, Elijah, safe at home with his family in Minnesota, and think of all the children wrenched from their parent arms at the Mexican border. I live in hope that, though innocent children have been carried away to unknown places by the Administration’s net, it is only a matter of time before those who have made them orphans are themselves “trapped in the schemes they have devised.”
– Gordon C. Stewart in the wilderness, August 29, 2018.
You’ve had days like this. I know you have. Days when everything hurts. Days when you open your eyes and can’t see, or wish you couldn’t see. Days when, if you have hearing aids, you put them away. Days when your head hurts, though you have no headache. Days when what you cherish is belittled, twisted, misrepresented, and assaulted.
The president’s overtures to North Korea and Russia have given reason to wonder whether perhaps he is following that spirit of The Confession of 1967. But, then, I hear the name calling, the insults, the braggadocio, and remember the dedication of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and the headache threatens to become a migraine. But I have learned over the years since confirmation class that, though the loudest voices often hold the microphone, there is an inverse relation between loudness and truth, volume and good sense, loud clashing cymbals and the still small Voice that cannot be silenced.
Tom, the Mennonite grounds-keeper, found the upper parts of the dead tree on the lawn last week while we were away. Its five-feet girth logs now serve as a barrier between the woods and the open space where the cabin sits. There’s no one left to remember how old the tree was, and what remains of it is too rotten to identify the rings. But the fallen tree that once fed the pileated woodpeckers continues to serve the community as a grocery for ground-feeding birds and other animals that feast on the termites and carpenter ants that once drew the woodpeckers.
Property is only a matter of time. No one owns a woodpecker. No one owns an insect!
Then, later this morning, we learned that Twitter’s most prominent tweeter is now accusing Twitter of being biased against conservative Senators and senatorial candidates, which led to a second line of T-shirts: ‘Proverbs to Live by in the Era of DJT’. T-Shirt #1 of Proverbs to Live by in the Era of DJT would read:
Views from the Edge 