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more on foes
I gotta say that this parking every morning with a psalm in the soaking sort of way is so very delightful. Having angsted over the communication part, it must be said, holy moley, why haven’t I spent my life doing this? It’s one of the curiosities of getting older. I stumble into something like this–a way of praying especially that connects especially and I feel this regret for mucking about for years with other kinds of praying that seem more like pious worry or introspection or something that required enormous amounts of will power to come back to next time. I must be a slow learner.This morning, it was the second part of psalm 3.
There’s something wonderful happens when you just give yourself over to a psalm like this–a kind practiced acceptance of what’s there. Less kicking and probing and trying to understand and more accepting or placing one’s self underneath the words to see what drips one’s way. This morning, more settled awareness, of the overall orientation of the psalm vis a vis foes. Never once does the psalmist address the foes. Or bother thinking what he’s going to say to the foes or how he’s going to respond or avoid or counter the foes. Man, that’s what occupies me most of the time in the face of any conflict with others. (Let’s just call the “foe” for all practical purposes anyone who stimulates the “fight and flight” response inside–which if there were a meter running would probably be lots of people, including friends and loved ones. )
But no, this psalm simply models the God-ward tilt of the heart in the face of foes. As if foes are the occasion to connect with God. Even who God is–the one we run to in the face of foes. I know I’m talking about it now. But in the meditating on the psalm, one just feels it, the steady low-fizz calm. Oh that my neural networks could be strengthened along those lines! What a curious thing to spend a good chunk of time meditating on a psalm about foes and coming away pickled in peace.
