A Shallow Dive into the Psalms

The book of psalms in the Christian and Hebrew bibles offers the reader a resource which connects to aspects of our lives in ways that should not be ignored.  In the Christiaan context they are an integral part of the liturgy.  The Book of Psalms in the Christian bible consists of 150 psalms attributed to many different authors.   Up to half the psalms are attributed to King David.  However, as noted in the go-to-source of knowledge on-line, Wikipedia, “David's authorship is not accepted by most modern Bible scholars, who instead attribute the composition of the psalms to various authors writing between the 9th and 5th centuries BC.”

The 150 psalms with many different authors vary in content and length.  The shortest psalm number 117 is two verses long; it is a psalm of praise to God.  The longest, psalm 119, has 176 verses.  It is what is called an acrostic work.  According to the Oxford Companion to the Bible, “an acrostic poem is a poem in which the initial letters of each successive line form a word, phrase or pattern.”  In psalm 119, the psalm is divided into parts composed of 8 verses.  Each psalm uses a letter from the Hebrew alphabet which is comprised of 22 letters e.g., the first 8 verses correspond to the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph.

In delving into the Book of Psalms it may be helpful to categorize the psalms.  This can be done in different ways.  One way I found on-line, uses 10 categories.  Here is the link https://knoxepc.wordpress.com/2020/04/01/the-10-types-of-psalms/.

Praise: A psalm of praise is pretty self-explanatory. It focuses on praising who God is and what He has done (for example, Psalm 1). We even see praise psalms in other places, such as 2 Chronicles 20.

Hymns: These are songs of joy from people who are happy with God and their circumstances. They often urge others to sing to God as well (see Psalm 98).

Laments: On the flip side of joy is distress, and that results in the lament psalms. These express emotional and spiritual suffering with a plea to God to intervene and help (such as Psalm 88).

Imprecatory: The most difficult type of psalm to understand, imprecatory psalms call for God’s judgment upon enemies. They use striking images and ultimately leave justice and vengeance to God alone (such as Psalm 69).

Thanksgiving: While these psalms are full of joy, they are more specific in the reasons why one is joyful. As the category indicates, thanksgiving psalms thank God for blessings and provision (see Psalm 30).

Prophetic: Many of the psalms hold prophetic oracles where God is the speaker rather than the subject. Psalm 50 would be your go-to example of one of these.

Confidence: Instead of falling into despair like a lament, confidence psalms see opposition coming but they rise to state their trust in God and His guidance (Psalm 23).

Wisdom: Some of the psalms share traits of other biblical wisdom literature with practical guidance and warnings (Psalm 119).

Remembrance: This is a psalm that looks back at what God has done in the past and seeks to remind everyone of these acts and promises (Psalm 136).

Royal: Any time a psalm dips into regal imagery — of kings, processions, thrones, and the like — it’s most likely a royal psalm either from a king, about a king, or about God as king.

May you be blessed with psalms that speak to you on your journey.

I acknowledge that we are on the original homelands of the many Indigenous Nations who have lived since time immemorial in Canada or as many First and other Indigenous Nations.  All of the lands in Canada are the subject of up to one hundred Treaties signed by the Crown in the right of Canada with these Nations. I will only mention a few of the Nations: the Cree, Ojibway, Blackfoot, Blood, Dakota, Mig M'ag, Huron, Inuit and these lands are also home to the Metis people.

Are You Lonesome Tonight

The title I have chosen for today’s missive comes from a popular song written by Roy Turk and Lou Handman in 1926.  It was recorded by Elvis Presley and was well known as a result.  This evocative title gets to the nub of the topic I want to explore today – are you lonely if you are alone.  Conversely, can you be lonely in the midst of people?  What does it mean to be lonely and is this something we should be concerned about?

I was inspired to write about this by two events in the last few days.  One was an episode of the CBC program Wiretap that was broadcast Sunday night.  The other was an episode of On Being hosted by Krista Tippett on NPR.  The Wiretap episode explored the idea that Hell is other people.  It used a plot outline of the Jean Paul Sartre Play, No Exit to introduce the episode.  Here is the plot summary is taken from the entry on Wikipedia:

The play begins with three characters who find themselves waiting in a mysterious room. It is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity. It is the source of Sartre's especially famous phrase "L'enfer, c'est les autres" or "Hell is other people", a reference to Sartre's ideas about the look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object from the view of another consciousness.

The three souls find that they are in hell or in Hell because they can’t stand the personality traits of the other people they are stuck with.  But as it was noted on Wiretap, when given an opportunity to leave they decided to stay where they were.  We are left, perhaps, to conclude that this may not be hell.  Rather it is purgatory i.e., God’s waiting room where the people are being purged of their sins in preparation for entering Paradise. 

The On Being episode was an interview with Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States entitled, To Be a Healer.  The episode can be found here https://onbeing.org/programs/vivek-murthy-to-be-a-healer/?utm_source=pause&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=OBKTS1.

He holds that loneliness can be positive in the short term but in the long term it can be harmful:

In the short term, the stress of loneliness serves as a natural signal that nudges us to seek out social connection — just as hunger and thirst remind us to eat and drink. But when loneliness lasts for a long time, it can become harmful by placing us in a state of chronic stress.” And then that has all this cascade of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ripple effects. But you also offered four strategies in that article that anybody could do that move us individually towards this social reality.

The four steps which should be possible for everyone, “and they are four simple steps, because it turns out that because we are hardwired for connection, even just a little bit of time and a little bit of investment in human connection goes a long way toward making us better.”

Here are the four steps:

1.       spend 15 minutes a day connecting with somebody you care about.

2.       give people your full attention when you talk to them.

3.       find opportunities to serve others.

4.       Find time for solitude

Murthy notes that we need to understand the difference between loneliness and solitude:

loneliness is not so much about how many people you have around you. It’s about whether you feel like you belong. It’s about whether you truly know your own value and feel like you are connected to other people. It’s about the quality of your relationships with others and yourself. The solitude is important because it’s in moments of solitude, when we allow the noise around us to settle, that we can truly reflect, that we can find moments in our life to be grateful for.

As an introvert, I have had a challenge in my life to differentiate my desire for solitude and my need to be alone to avoid the challenges of engaging people and my innate desire to avoid conflict.  I have had to learn to discern when I am spending time in my small corner to recharge my introverted nature and when it is out of avoidance.  This remains a bit of a challenge for me and I find it easy to retreat to my small corner.

May you be blessed to find solitude and connection on your journey.

 

Lord, Teach Me to Pray

In this season of Easter, here are some thoughts on prayer for you to consider.

Very Rev. Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco notes that it has been said that there are only two prayers: Help, and Thank You.  The rest are footnotes.  However, he expands on this by saying  he was told in Sunday school that there are five elements of prayer: Adoration, Praise, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.  Adoration and Thanksgiving are primary.  They place us in the relationship with God and with all things. 

Ann and Barry Ulanov declare that prayer is Primary Speech (the title of their book on prayer), “To pray is to listen to hear this self (who and what we are) who is speaking. This speech is primary because it is basic and fundamental, our ground.  In prayer we say who we are.”  

From writer Anne Lamott after her conversion to Christianity:

Prayer … begins with stopping in our tracks, or with our backs against the wall, or when we are going under the waves, or when we are just so sick and tired of being physically sick and tired that we surrender, or at least we finally stop running away and at long last walk or lurch or crawl toward something. Or maybe, miraculously, we just release our grip slightly.  

Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true: We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape….  

I also practice Centering Prayer which is wordless – emptying of the self to help me listen to God and help me realize it is a two-way conversation.  The emptying often is less than quiet as my “monkey brain” (with apologies to monkeys) does not like the sound of silence – at least on my end of the conversation.

In any case God does not grade your prayer – the important thing is to pray as you are able.   May your prayers be blessed on your journey. 

Compassion

The following is taken from an interview with Karen Armstrong, the prolific writer on religious matters.  Her many books include A History of God, A Short History of Myth, The Great Transformation, to name a few.  The interview is based on her book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.

Despite what many people like to think, Armstrong said, there is not much true compassion being practised in the West these days. "This is not a compassionate society, no matter what we tell ourselves. We are a superficial and frequently unkind society," she said, adding that such negative qualities are often exaggerated by the mass media's focus on conflict and gossip.

In addition, Armstrong states, “most of the public believes religious leaders do precious little to promote the virtue of compassion. Most of the time when [religious leaders] come together they're either condemning some intellectual heresy, or condemning Islam, or inveighing against the West, or quarrelling about whether women can be priests or gays can be bishops. That's all you hear about, really."

At a deeper level, however, Armstrong believes all religious traditions have a great deal of value to say about compassion, which she says most people mistakenly believe means "feeling sorry for someone." Armstrong takes her definition of compassion from the Latin root, "to feel with the other."

Armstrong declares that Compassion can be summed up by the Golden Rule, which is common to every faith tradition. "You look into your own heart and refuse under any circumstances to inflict pain on anyone else." She believes people need to practice compassion every moment. “Compassion brings you into the presence of what monotheists call 'God' or what Buddhists call 'nirvana,' " Armstrong said.

Armstrong believes that compassion is central to Christianity. Jesus's apostle, Paul, taught that acts of love and compassion are more important than faith itself.

Buddhists, Armstrong added, teach that "after reaching enlightenment, man must come down from the mountaintop and return to the marketplace and show his compassion there for all living things."

One of the most famous sayings attributed to Mohammed in the Muslim collection known as the Hadith is, "Not one of you can be a believer unless he desires for his neighbour what he desires for himself."

Despite what many people like to think, Armstrong said, there is not much true compassion being practiced in the West these days.

May we all be blessed to receive and give compassion on our journey

At a deeper level, however, Armstrong believes all religious traditions have a great deal of value to say about compassion, which she says most people mistakenly believe means "feeling sorry for someone."

Armstrong takes her definition of compassion from the Latin root, "to feel with the other."  Compassion can be summed up by the Golden Rule, she said, which is common to every faith tradition. "You look into your own heart and refuse under any circumstances to inflict pain on anyone else." She believes people need to practice compassion every moment. "Compassion brings you into the presence of what monotheists call 'God' or what Buddhists call 'nirvana,' " Armstrong said. It's central to Christianity. Jesus's apostle, Paul, taught that acts of love and compassion are more important than faith itself.

Buddhists, Armstrong added, teach that "after reaching enlightenment, man must come down from the mountaintop and return to the marketplace and show his compassion there for all living things."

The Muslim holy book, the Koran, which is often stereotyped in the West as doing little more than promoting violence and extremism, is actually devoted to the ethics of compassion, Armstrong emphasized. "It's not concerned with doctrine. It's about living justly and looking after the poor and vulnerable in your community." One of the most famous sayings attributed to Mohammed in the Muslim collection known as the Hadith is, "Not one of you can be a believer unless he desires for his neighbour what he desires for himself." 

May you be blessed to give and receive compassion on your journey. 

 

I’m a Soul, Man; I’m a Soul-Man -part 2

On Saturday, I volunteered at the Parkhill Carnegie Gallery.  This is the former Parkhill Carnegie Library Gallery which was saved from a slow decline and demise by a group of volunteers - the Friends of the Carnegie Library.  It was renovated and turned into a gallery for local artists and a performance space.

In any case, I volunteered to hold down the fort – so to speak – as it was open to the public.  I have lots of time on my hands and was reading The School of Charity, a wonderful little meditation on the Christian Creed, by Evelyn Underhill.  Underhill was an engaging writer whose works include theology, spirituality, mysticism, and novels.  In addition, she was well known as a retreat leader and Spiritual Director.  In any case, I picked up this little book to pass the time at the Gallery and am very glad I did.  Perhaps it chose me rather than me choosing it. 

As I delved into the book, what grabbed my attention was the references to ‘soul’.  I had written about the soul last week and wasn’t planning to follow up with that but I took this to be a message and decided that I could see if I could get a handle on what Underhill says about the soul in this book. The first thing is that, although Underhill does refer to the soul quite a few times, she does not define it – at least in this work.  Even though she sees people as creatures of God, Underhill, quite rightly, sees people as being in great need of help.  God delivers us from “the imbecilities of religious self-love and self-assurance; and sink(s) our little souls in the great life of the race”.  Here, soul seems to be used as an essence of who we are.  This is followed up with a similar use when Underhill states, “Prayer is the give and take between the little souls of men and that three-fold Reality (God).” 

Although the soul of people is limited and small, Underhill holds that it can enlarge.  She opens her chapter entitled The World To Come with a quote from another author, Elizabeth Leseur, ‘I will ask of God such an enlargement of soul that I may love him with ardour, serve him with joy, and transmit his radiance to the world.”  For this to happen, the soul must be nourished.  Underhill recommends doing this through meditation on the Christian experience, “This is why meditation on the Christian mysteries, chewing the cud of the Gospels, is so nourishing to the soul, and so inexhaustible as a basis for prayer.”

Underhill’s belief in the importance of prayer in the soul’s growth is reinforced a little later and she notes that it is gradual and unseen to us, “This should make us realize how deeply hidden, how gradual and unseen by us, the soul’s growth in the life of prayer is likely to be.”  We will be supported in this effort by the Spirit of Divine Love, “our real situation as Christian souls – little spirits supported by the infinite Spirit of Divine Love”. 

In all this, the soul is calling out to us for connection with the Divine, “In the same way, the deep mysteries of the Being of God and the call of the soul cannot be seen by us, until they have passed through the human medium, a human life.” 

In all this, Underhill is agreeing with the understanding of the soul as an immortal part of our being which is seeking the Divine and through prayer may grow in relationship with the Source of our being.  It may be unseen and hidden; nevertheless, it is the reality of our existence and part of who we are. 

May you be blessed with souls that are nourished and grow on your journey.

I’m a Soul, Man; I’m a Soul-Man

 The idea of ‘soul’ comes up frequently in my experience.  There is the concept, theologically and psychologically, of the person being composed of four parts - body, mind, spirit, and soul. It appears frequently in hymns.  One source on-line gives a count of the number of times soul occurs in the bible – 754 in the Old Testament and 102 in the New Testament.  Beyond that, there is the use in today’s culture. We have soul music and soul brothers and soul sisters.  I doubt that there is an accurate count of how many hymns speak of the soul.  Here is one of my favourite old hymns:

It Is Well With My Soul

   

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll,

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

 

Chorus

It is well (it is well)

With my soul (with my soul)

It is well, it is well with my soul.

 

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,

Let this blessed assurance control;

That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate.

And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

 

My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought,

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

 

From this hymn, we can see that if it is well with your soul, all is well with you.  However, if push comes to shove, do we have a firm foundation (to quote another hymn) what the soul actually is?

I have on my bookshelf, a few books that have references to ‘soul’ in the titles; Modern Man in Search of a Soul  by Carl Jung, Boundaries of the Soul by June Springer, Soul Making by Alan Jones.  It is interesting that , when I checked, none of them actually have a definition of soul.   Here is a sample of the quotes from the books which refer to the ‘soul’:

But spiritually the Western world is in a precarious situation-and the danger is greater the more we blind ourselves to the merciless truth and illusion about beauty of soul.  (Modern Man in Search of a Soul)

Besides, the task is not merely to restore what is lost.  In becoming  lost, the “soul” (I don’t know a better word for that central guiding aspect of the unconscious, the nature of which we have only a dim awareness) has ceased to be the connecting ribbon of a road between a man as he knows himself and the vast unknown and unknowable.  (Boundaries of the Soul)

The making of a soul is hard work, and yet it is also a free gift.  God’s wild card of unconditional love is secure and sure, but we are found or lost in our choosing.  (Soul Making)

I found it interesting that Soul Making had no entry for ‘soul’ in the index – an interesting oversight given the title (and theme) of the book.  I found a few quotes by Carl Jung which speak of soul (I’m sure there are many more).  Here is one that is revelatory of his view:

Being that has soul is a living being.  Soul is a living thing in man, that which lives of itself and causes life.  Therefore, God breathed into Adam a living breath, that he might live.  With her cunning play of illusions, the soul lures into life the intenseness of matter that does not want to live.  She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived.  She is full of snares and traps, in order that man should fall. Should reach the earth, entangle himself there, and stay caught, so that life should be lived;

Putting aside the non-inclusive language of these quotes , we can perhaps grasp that the meaning of soul is rather like water which is difficult to get hold of much less actually grasp.  It might be helpful to turn to an encyclopedic definition.  Here is one from The Encyclopedia Britannica which defines soul thus:

soul, in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. In theology, the soul is further defined as that part of the individual which partakes of divinity and often is considered to survive the death of the body.

If I can attempt to summarize, soul is something which all people possess and which is essential to people and can be the part of us that guides us along the journey to becoming more fully human.  May you be blessed to be guided on that journey.

 

Myth and Metaphor

 Recently, I was watching a debate on-line between Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Richard Dawkins.   Sacks is the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, is what I would describe as the chief atheist and apologist.  The debate was a typical one on the topic science versus religion and does religion have any significance in the modern world – at least that is how I would sum up the focus of the debate.

One point in the discussion summed up for me the reductionist approach that Dawkins and other scientists of his ilk have in their approach to the world and their dismissal of many things religious.  Dawkins pressed Sacks on the story of the intention of Abraham to follow YHWH – God’s order to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  Dawkins pressed Sacks as to his belief on the literal nature of the story i.e. was there actually a person named Abraham who had the intention to sacrifice his son in response to the command.  For Dawkins, there had to be a concrete basis for the story for it to be meaningful.  Sacks responded that it was representative of the movement of the Israelite people away for the practice of child sacrifice which was common to the people in that part of the world at that time. 

There seemed to be a complete misunderstanding by Dawkins of the importance of story as metaphor for people throughout history and the importance of it today.  Theologian and author Marcus Borg notes in his book, The God We Never Knew, that all images of God are metaphors.  Though metaphors, he states:

are not literally true, they can nevertheless be true…Metaphors are evocative. Suggestive of more than one meaning, they are resonant; they have multiple associations and cannot be translated into a single equivalent literal statement.

Metaphors cannot be weighed or put under a microscope and viewed in a telescope but they are true nonetheless.  That is something that Dawkins apparently does not seem to comprehend.  Myths can be understood in the same light as metaphors - actually, myths might be seen as extended metaphors and have a Truth that has resonated with people throughout the ages when you understand them metaphorically. 

To elaborate on the distinction between the approach of Dawkins and that of Sacks, it is helpful to look at the distinction between a sign versus a symbol as denoted by Carl Jung – the founder of Jungian psychology.  Jung notes in Man and His Symbols, that signs, “do no more than denote the objects to which they are attached.”  In effect, they have a one-to-one correspondence i.e., a stop sign on the side of a road means that traffic on that side of the road should stop.   

A symbol, as Jung declares, “is a term, a name, or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning.”  Jung continues to elaborate, “It implies something vague, unknown, or hidden from us.” 

Religion, in its essence, is an attempt to understand the ineffable of life which cannot be reduced to a sign.  It is the undiscovered country which people are attempting to discover as best we can by exploring that which is hidden in an effort to see its truth.

May you be blessed to explore those hidden things which are revealed on your journey.