Psalm 25:1-10
Advent 1 - Year C
Lent 1 - Year B
Proper 10 (15) - Year C
What promise are you looking for? Two typical ones are being triumphant or living faithfully.
This psalm seems to be most interested in winning over others by having picked or been picked by a most powerful god or totem.
Key words here include trouble, shame, guilt, guarded life, and some sense of eternal truth beyond local reality.
If these become less important we can jump to the end of this pericope to focus on what it takes for us to develop and continue in a sense of being a part of a whole - being humble. Here the focus becomes our faithfulness, our promise fulfillment, our covenant, our word. This doesnÕt focus on guilt or prevailing. Rather we look at simply using our gifts.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/11/psalm-251-10.html
In the USofA it is Thanksgiving Day.
Let's try verse 10 (NRSV):
All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who are "thankful".
[can being thankful be the energy that allows one to keep covenants?]
or verse 21:
May "thanksgiving" preserve me,
for I wait for you.
[are integrity and uprightness evidences of thanksgiving?]
What other places can you find that you can retranslate the psalm or your life in terms of thanksgiving?
- - -
LON (Reader)
Aloha Wesley,
Thanks for giving!
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/november2003.html
Alphabetical poems have an artificiality to them. Nonetheless, they can be significant cries for help or insightful ditties.
Here's a part of an alphabetical and mathematical song by Grin, Judy Fjell's puppet.
GIM glad IMME, OUR glad URU
And if U + I make a WE
Does 1 + 1 add up 2 1 2 or 3
...
So WE're 1 + We're 2 + We're 3
There's WE U + ME U ME + WE
I don't know how this can B
But then I don't even understand ME
But these R the questions that life is made of
Arithmeticklish problems of love
So I'll end it 4 now with 5 ways WE agree
U love Bing U I love Bing ME I love U
U love ME . . . + sometimes . . .
We both even love Bing WE
You can find Judy's work at JudyFjell.com. This song is on her CD "Living on Dreams." Sample the title song and order her material.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/march2003.html
Can we fast from shame and exultation? Are these the result of not fasting toward a preferred future of steadfast love received and responded to with our own steadfast love?
Does the creation image of being created in the image of a creator call us to fast from and toward a variety of covenants so that the image of steadfast love and faithfulness becomes our own image? If it doesn't so call us, we are intentionally deciding that where we are is good enough, that wholeness takes too much work.
One of the tricks here is to finally recognize that no short-term fast for limited goals is going to satisfy. We practice fasting that we might live fasting. In this way fasting really is never away from something as much as it is toward something more desirable than our current limitations.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/march2006.html
Psalm 25:1-10 or Psalm 82
82:5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk around in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
25:5 Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.
These fifth verses give us the interesting interplay between "they" and "me". In so doing they bring us back to questions of the neighbor and to the journey of faith. So easy it is to blame them and to recognize we, at least, are on the right path even if we haven't yet arrived.
What way keeps the foundations secure? For those focusing on ourselves going in "the right" direction, the issue is mercy and love. For those focusing on others headed in "the wrong" direction, it is justice. Often times we conflate all this into one big mishmash of mercylovejustice, applying mercy where justice is needed and justice where love is to shine through.
A part of the hard work we have before us is that of knowing that Psalm 25 is Psalm 25 and Psalm 82 is Psalm 82. A key role of the prophetic life is that of clarity, clarity, clarity. In our line of work this is as much a truism as is location, location, location.
May we know what we don't know and test faith in the midst of fear and trembling.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/july2004.html
When we are dealing with very difficult situations in life that bring out the big disapproving words like "sinner" and "afflicted" (too easily translated as "humble" which can be seen as a positive virtue), it is important to have equally big reserves of "kindness". The big words for kindness are here noted as "steadfast love" (cause when you've only said "love" you've not said it all) and "faithfulness". These give an eternal arc to our interactions of the moment. This allows us continued connection in the midst of stress and brokenness.
Rather than being a polarity this pairing is a parallelism. When smashed together sparks don't fly. Imagine one of the heavenly host on your left from the "steadfast love" wing and one on your right from the "faithfulness" wing of heavenly discourse. As they embrace one another through you, you find yourself "steadfaithful".
The result is perhaps a new way of honoring the same reality both re-presented. "Truthiness" had its day, I wonder if "steadfaith" might have its moment. Instead of faith being a fixed place, which can be so easily left behind simply by letting time go by, we find faith present in every place we find ourselves.
There are so many ways in which things can go awry. We may even be able to count more of them than counting the ways love goes forth. Wanton treachery abounds. In its face, a steadfaith response brings hope through the education (leading, instruction) of folks who for whatever reason haven't gotten the "kind" thing. Thus sinners are not denotated by specific behaviors but connotative of general obliviousness.
- - -
In whose image am I?
May my imagoes steadfaithfulness
stand me in good stead
in this place
to rejoice in this opportunity
to wantonly trust and not treach
[question: ought I be putting an "amen" at the end of these prayers to better identify them as such?]
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html
Psalm 25:1-10
Genesis 9:8-17
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15
For many the radio stimulates the imagination more than does television. This is in part the way we receive the two senses. Mark's silence on the temptations brings more possibilities to mind than the traditional three in Matthew and Luke. Mark also reminds us that this was not Jesus and Satan, mano a mano, but Jesus was attended by angels even during temptation (not just to soothe afterward).
If so attended, what does this do to the hunger and jumping off temptations mentioned elsewhere?
A connection with angels connects us with time beyond ourselves (you may want to refresh your reading of some of Madeline L'Engle's supposed children's books - her Wrinkle in Time series).
If we are connected beyond one current time, we might begin to wonder about Christ suffering once and salvation through water (Noah and baptism) as singular events.
During Lent we may wonder about what it means to be a sign of reconciliation between G*D and creation. Whether that is a one-time sign or repeated, it is a lifting of soul - ours and many. One sign is not shying away from temptations that we might slyly defeat them through avoidance, getting overly busy with something else, or nit-picking the language of the temptation.
- - -
it has been said
we are built to buffer bad news
defense mechanisms are a gift from G*D
trying to make bad news Not True
requires a special attitude
this-isn't-happening-to-me
now comes an intriguing question
can even this situation be turned around?
facing it is a first step to saying Yes
[this prayer fragment is based on a bit of Unbinding the Gospel, pages 24-25]
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html
Psalm 25:1-10 or Psalm 82
What a scene -- G*D enters a divine council after having seen how Amos responded to his call and, having learned, stands to prophecy, "How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?"
That divine council -- ours -- after all, we are there. In such instances, divinity blinds. Time and time again it is necessary to be called out, to see again the weak, etc.
So, we, too, might call out, "Do not remember my past judgments, according to steadfast love may I judge anew and break my own precedent."
It is this feedback loop of re-judging that instructs us. No feedback loop, no G*D.
- - -
hooray
I am divine
a most high child
woe
I am mortal
fallen into death
now
rise up
with healing
healer
wounded
wounded healer
lift
weal and woe
and every soul
give
justice needed
not justice achievable
move
between poles
holding both souls
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Compare verse 10 in the NRSV:
"All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his decrees."
with THE MESSAGE:
"From now on every road you travel
Will take you to God.
Follow the Covenant signs;
Read the charted Directions."
Given that the Noah Covenant and some others originate from and are focused on what G*D will do, there isn't much for us to do to keep them as they are G*D's. We can however observe the Covenants made by G*D and use them in navigating life.
There is a feel of exclusiveness in the NRSV that fits well with a chosen-ness, a belovedness, but not so well with passing that blessing on. Even if you don't keep a particular covenant and decree, you are yet on your way to G*D.
So, what covenant signs do you recognize? Are doing more than recognizing them and actually using them?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html
This is almost an acrostic psalm. Problem is, two letters are missing and two doubled. Likely this reflects changes it has undergone in its transmission. If so, what is an originalist, a literalist, to do?
One thing available with the broken pattern is for us to be open to more than appears. So, to begin, read the whole psalm. Then focus in on verses 6 & 7 and mindfulness. What do you want remembered and what do you not want remembered?
In these we find out more about ourselves and G*D. In this interplay wisdom comes as we let go what we want remembered and come to terms with that which we do not want remembered.
Advent comes as a time to remember and not remember a prior event. We keep learning the wrong things about our heritage and forgetting right things about it. Advent can be a time of clarifying our previous encounters with G*D.
Advent also comes as a time to anticipate and resist a next coming. Here, too, we project unhelpful behaviors into the future and hold back new responses to repeated situations. Advent can be a time of being open to a next encounter that will dash our previous limits.
Aren't you glad this is an imperfect psalm? It leaves room for you to play with it and make it your own, just like those who cut it for Advental purposes. For instance the word translated as "mercy" in verse 6 might better be translated "motherly compassion" [The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 4, p. 778]. This anticipates the central verse 11 with its emphasis upon pardon of iniquity. If we were to view the whole psalm we might find our Advent work to be thankful for iniquities pardoned and to practice to be ready to motherly and preemptively pardon those who "iniquitize" against ourself or another or themselves.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html
“All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,....” That may be enough to be said. Then wherever steadfast love and faithfulness are evident might be claimed as being of G*D. This would be a G*D for all.
But we so often go on one step too far and claim that the only true steadfast love and faithfulness is that which reflects those in a position of privilege and power. Here steadfast love and faithfulness are “for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.” This is understood as followers of a particular manifestation of G*D in historical, societal, and theological contexts. It is not for others, they are defined out.
And so a Lenten question comes: to what “O Lord” or “my God” are you entrusting your soul, your life? If Sundays in Lent are moments of Easter, was Jesus raised only for those who could articulate an allegiance to him or for all to see becoming G*D, steadfast in love and faithful, as a worthy goal?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/02/psalm-251-10.html