Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20

Proper 8 (13) - Year C


Here is a process of engaging the Psalms that shifts our relationship with them. Our tendency is to read them as individuals and to apply them individually. This experiment from Godwrestling—Round 2: Ancient Wisdom, Future Paths by Arthur Waskow might open up a new insight for a community.

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      A more complex and subtle way of facing God through the Psalms has been explored by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, an extraordinary davvener who is also one of the most creative choreographers of new forms of davvening. Schachter-Shalomi brought his own profound mystical sensibilities first into a deep learning with the Lubavitcher Hassidim, and then into the much wider world of Sufi dancers, Zen sitters, Buddhist meditators, feminist seekers, and transpersonal psychologists. Convinced that for a new era of Jews God must be sensed as directly present, he saw that since the Psalms are addressed directly to God, they offer an important opportunity to embody God in the community of davveners. Rabbi Jeff Roth brought to this insight his own work with Martin Buber’s call for dialogue, and what emerged was what Roth and Schachter-Shalomi called “dialogical davvening” with the Psalms.
      This meant that pairs of people read a psalm in dialogue within the Minyan: One person reads the first verse of the psalm silently, absorbs it, and decides how to express something close to this thought in her or his own words. Then s/he will face the “spark of God” in the other partner to say the new thought to the God Who lives in the partner’s face. The second partner pays full attention to what the first one says, and then turns back to the printed page to absorb the second verse of the psalm and do the same work of midrashic transmutation—taking into account both what s/he has already heard, and what the text says. They continue to go back and forth, speaking to God in each other until the psalm is completed.
      Becoming God and facing God in this way brings the psalm alive. The movement of thought and feeling that is characteristic of most psalms becomes far more intelligible that what emerges from a more-or-less rote reading. In addition, by addressing a human partner as God and being addressed as God, many participants find themselves spiritually moved in new ways.
      What is the secret behind the power of such practices? We are taking what seem to be poetic metaphors about the face, and turning them into physical reality. The process is a kind of three-dimensional midrash, turning words into action.

 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/06/psalm-771-2-11-20.html

 


 

Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 or Psalm 16

In days of trouble we remember having come through previous years of trouble.

In any day, troubled or not, we are able to choose which past we will focus on and which promise we will hitch our star to.

Whether the boundary lines of life have fallen in pleasant places or not, we are able to receive counsel, to rejoice, and rest in assurance.

Given all this, we gain perspective to fulfill the prophetic role. There will be deepening troubles. Days of trouble will multiply into years and decades of trouble. We know this because we can simply project forward the outcome of our behaviors in the world and interactions between one another.

Prophets do less griping about this than others because that very same perspective allows us to see the promises that are available by simply changing our present behaviors and interactions. Not that this is some magic slot-machine where we put in our money and reap a bounty, but consequences are modified as we modify our connections and further modified as we are encouraged by our first incremental shifts to continue going on to wholeness.

I suspect prophets and poets are perceived as gripers because having to shift patterns is never easy and it is always easier to dismiss the one who calls for such as a malcontent. Our identity is shaped by the negative advertising against us by the power resisting choice. But we couldn't be true to the gift we have been given if we clammed up simply because someone didn't care for the message and threatened any such messenger.

So, externally we hearken back to better days in order to project forward better days. Internally we listen carefully to promises not yet seen and choose for them in all their yet insubstantiality.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/june2004.html

 


 

Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 or Psalm 16

Those of old plowed through waters of chaos. They laid down straight rows of guidance, boundaries pleasing to our desires. When we think of power we see it in days of yore and yearn for its doubling and tripling in our time and place.

If it is power we see in the past, what do we envision for the future?

If looking for a future qualitatively and quantitatively better than what has been, why would we think that repeating the events and tools of the past will get us to arrive at a different place? While thankful that we have come thus far, even by some rather nefarious methods, we might yet begin to risk moving into a preferred future through radical revisioning of the tools and direction of our daily work.

- - -

desperately seeking G*D
we search old haunts
apply old creeds
looking in all the old places

blundering with old swords
charging new cannon
with old canon
charging backward

honorable folly
is folly still
honor the past
by not repeating it

- - -

as Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote:

Half a league half a league
Half a league onward
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade
Charge for the guns' he said
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldiers knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turned in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot & shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

- - -

Deborah (Reader) said...
When reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade" below, I was struck by images of lemmings going over cliffs. Why do we condemn lemmings (or sheep) for mindlessly following a leader to their destruction but glorify and honor soldiers who do it in war?

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

 


 

"I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;
I will remember your wonders of old."

You created in multiple images (as many as the gods).
You were disappointed in your creation.
You threw your creation out.
You pursued your exiled creation.
You did not kill your creation when your creation killed.
You dispersed language groups.
You were flooded with despair and flooded in return.
You used famine to direct migrations.
You chose the youngest and least to lead.
You raised dynasties.
You were frustrated by leaders.
You exiled peoples.
You were their hope, delayed as it has been.

And, now, in a day of my own trouble - I look to you?

Yes, and to myself and my friends and to creation itself.
I cry.
I cry aloud.
I call to mind.
I grin.
I laugh.
I go around again.
Dance with me, G*D, a larger dance than my day's trouble - or yours.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/06/psalm-771-2-11-20.html