Canter Bridge

Life as often as not places us far from where we’d rather be.

Such unruly distance can be resented, resisted, can become the root gland of our bitterest spittle. Alternatively, we embrace the far place as a feature of our vocation. From there we send out what roots we may, we become schooled in affection for the adoptive place, yet still we speak our restless longing for the distant city that endures as our heart’s habitation. We even name that far place home.

The psalms know this rooted nostalgia and dare to name it. Often Zion—a city that the biblical materials dare to compare to our mother’s breast—is the place that calls to us, the desired destination of our migrations. Those with the sparest claims to its walls often precede us in the place. So does the eighty-fourth psalm say the thing:

Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my King and my God.
Happy are those who live in your house,
ever singing your praise. (Psalm 83:3-4 NRSV)

This poem figures among the most poignant of the canonical psalms. It is impossible not to quote swathes of it:

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God …..

Happy are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength;
the God of gods will be seen in Zion …

For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than live in the tents of wickedness.

Zion is for this poet the place of his heart’s deepest repose. Hers are the stones upon which his sense of belonging rises to unprecedented level, a rush of belonging to which he looks back from distant steps as the truest moment. He envisages his community gathering strength as it trudges its way to that place on his mental map, turning weeping valleys into pure-water springs by the sheer, purposeful determination of pilgrimage.

The Psalmist belongs to Zion and the city to him. There he understands who he is and must become.