Psalm 66:1-12

Proper 23 (28) - Year C

Expressing joy is deep work requiring a strong base. Before going further you can strengthen your base:

Repeat and repeat until your center becomes clear, beloved.

Here is the beginning of a field of joyful murmuring underlying periodic louder expressions.

From here we engage tests of our joy, whether from internal temptation or external turmoil. These tests temper us as is steel from of old, in fire and water.

We are free to be joy. There are no limits to expressions of joy other than our fear of self and/or others. Whether at home or in exile we breathe easy until we can breathe no more and in both breath and its cessation is our connection with the depths of creation’s continuity.

 

 

Psalm 66:1-12 or Psalm 111

"Pay no attention to the facts on the TV screen or in the papers and magazines. All is going well." So runs part of the debate about Iraq - an OZ story replayed off the page.

Sometimes all the praise talk feels like that. It is like talking to one of the old kings. It is not just a matter of "if you don't have something good to say, say nothing at all." It is studiously avoiding a recognition of difficulties and questions or actively turning any news other than glorious into glorious. Only one side can be spoken, there is only one perspective to hold.

Even with these hesitations about praise, one of the grandest images comes in 66:12, "yet you have brought us out to a spacious place." This is not a spacious empty, but a spacious full place, saturated. Would that we had a sense of spaciousness that understood there is more than enough to go around, that we are not playing a zero-sum game. Would that we had a sense of spaciousness that gives room to turn around, repent even, and rethink, replan, re-act.

This is the best praise - living from a space of enough daily bread, living from a space of uncoerced reevaluation and new beginning. Both of these lead us to acting from a better base and thus better participating in extravagant thanksgiving.

How might our decision-making be clearer? - being in a spacious place with resources aplenty and openness to move in ever better directions.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/october2004.html

 

 

Psalm 66:1-12 or Psalm 111

Psalms sound differently if intoned in the cadence of someone trudging into exile or if celebrating the overcoming of another.

Praise can remind us, in the midst of the deepest despair, to focus where some ultimate returning might yet come from. Anything other than this far-reaching possibility is no longer on the table. Praise is a precursor of return to better days and is cast in terms of that which was understood before the calamity.

Praise can remind us, in the midst of great glee, that everything is falling into place for an on-going, endless, jubilation. We have overcome and nothing will stop us now. We have praised God and passed the ammunition. All's right with our world.

Try reading these Psalms in these different voices and see which rings truest for you.

- - -

we are in a spacious place
where past pains can be let go
there is plenty of place
plenty enough for peace

we are in a spacious place
where future conquering is open
there is plenty of place
plenty enough for claiming

we are in a spacious place
where pain and victory intersect
there each can find its place
without interacting

we are in a spacious place
where even more options come together
there each place
touches each

we are in a spacious place
where choice of voice
determines character
and next covenants

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

 

 

"The theme of this psalm is not obvious . . . .", The Jewish Study Bible. So we continue the mystery of dreams. "The exodus-conquest theme may hint at the theme of the return from exile and re-entrance to Judah (... a common symbol for the return in postexilic times...)", ibid.

Praise G*D.

  1. We have been kept among the living while bad things happen to ordinary people.
  2. We have been tested by fire.
  3. We have been grounded like a bird in a net, trapped with no way out.
  4. We have been subdued.

          - - - (dream-like jump) - - -

  1. We have come to a spacious, prosperous place.

When we can't explain the various incongruities of life we are tempted to put it all on G*D - the pains and the joys, the testings and the blessings. None of this "proves" G*D. What lies behind our insistence on making sense of the world, even if it takes projecting experiences onto G*D? It would seem we are still in the midst of a dream.

Keep singing a better tomorrow. When we find ourselves there, perhaps then we will see beyond our multiplicities of experience and better understand this and other praise psalms.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/10/psalm-661-12.html