Canter Bridge

Occasionally a psalm, as though on a sunny afternoon with a glass of Merlot in hand and feet up, allows itself to savor the comprehensive provision of YHWH. Such is not a moment for fretting. There will be time enough for that.

The poet simply allows himself a lyrical sigh of contentment.

Psalm 65, in that vein of relaxed contemplation, casts its eye over the wide, satisfying goodness into which YHWH has brought his people. (more…)

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Ascribed to David, this psalm fits well into the historicizing tendency evident already in early biblical manuscripts to link each psalm to a moment in the life of the Israelite king. David’s flight into the Judean desert before the insurrection of Absalom, for example, would accord well with the psalm’s cryptic reference to ‘David, when he was in the desert of Judah’.

Yet one wonders whether the enduring power and pertinence of psalms like this one lie in their power to latch themselves onto the circumstances of our lives rather than to cling to the details of his. Whether the psalm’s memorable ‘dry and thirsty land where there is no water’ was for the writer a physical or a metaphorical location, it continues serving as the latter for us. I can walk over, open the tap, and find virtually no end to the flow of pure liquid. But right here, in this chair, on this morning, I can feel far more deeply than that liquid abundance the leering, bone-dry desert that threatens joy and meaning themselves. (more…)

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Transparent honesty between God and humankind requires expression. One cannot have intimacy while guarding silence. It is not permitted to us both to hold our guard and dance with our creator.

Both God and man must speak if the perforated boundary between heaven and earth is to yield, if Jerusalem is to descend, if prayers are to reach the altitude where Heaven can hear. (more…)

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Help is available.

This is the message that the poet who created Psalm 46 underscores in a time when it seems all that is reliable has been shaken. It takes only one earthquake experience to have that existential stake driven into the soul that only comes when the earth moves.

Anything else can be assumed to shift under duress. But the earth is not supposed to move. It us the Unmoved Thing, the stage upon which all manner of furniture makes its scraping sound as it comes, performs its task, and is whisked away. People march, race, crawl, and drag themselves across it, some lingering beyond their welcome, others making us wish they’d stayed.

But the earth itself does not move. (more…)

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