Subscribe to Posts
lection/ps.7/i’ve been way too politite
Psalm 7 this morning, and something accumulating or dawning already in this slow motion walk through the prayers of these psalmists. When it comes to content, how polite my prayers are in comparison to theirs. All these years of skim reading the psalms doesn’t do the difference justice. But the discipline of lectio lets you slip into the mindset of the psalmists. And you realize these lads are praying straight from the amygdala, the reptilian complex, the limbic system, or some of the most primitive parts of the brain.They are praying from the part of the brain that separates people into friend or foe and doesn’t bother with the nuance. They are praying from the part of the brain that’s lit up when we’re having nightmares: Rescue me from all my pursuers…lest like a lion they tear up my live–rend me with no one to save me (vss. 2-3).
This morning, it’s dawning on me: this part of my brain is firing all the time. But to make your way through this white collar, polite company world, you’ve got to expend enormous amounts of brain energy to override that part of the brain with all the sophisticated parts that calms the reptilian complex down. Which is fine.
But does that let God into the reptilian complex? Somehow, these psalms are meant to open up the part of the brain that go through life ever on the alert for survival, sheer survival, perceiving threats where they exist and sometimes where they don’t just to play it safe. The part of the brain that is either on or off, like an alarm.
So this morning, it was a matter of accepting this part of being human, identifying with the honest unvarnished words of the psalmist, and through that, opening my limbic system, the part of my brain that’s REACTIVE more than responsive, to a God willing to walk around in there as one who knows the landscape.
