Overheard at Seminary #2

"You know, when you learn Spanish, it's all like: 'how are you' and 'my name is.' In Hebrew? one of the first phrases you learn is: 'whole burnt offering.' "

Why reading the annoying psalms is part of my practice, or: Psalm 4, Part One.

When I first started meditating on the psalms a year and a half ago, I skipped the ones that irritated me. This was a necessary thing for me. At the time, I was trying to open my heart to a religion whose most visible proponents labeled me an abomination and who were, in my opinion, raging hypocrites and self-righteous assholes.

Coming to believe in anything spiritual is a process for me (we’ll talk about what I mean by “belief” some other time, for now: I don’t mean a mindless/willful insistence on a comic book superhero “god” that will act like a celestial vending machine and beat up anyone who doesn’t agree with me).

When I made the decision to really explore Christianity, I had to put a lot of my knee-jerk reactions on hold. Look for the things that open your heart, I told myself, don’t pay attention to the other stuff, for now.

My critical thinking friends might describe this as a willingness to be brainwashed, but it’s not like that. It’s more of a choice to be open and to pay attention to the things that bring out a strong reaction. And it’s only a first step in the process.

The thing is – stuff like religion (or spirituality/relationship with the divine), or love, or family, or identity – are things that usually matter to people on a deep level. As such, when injury happens, rejection or reaction to those things/people/institutions is pretty fierce. I remember a time, back in the early 80s, when I started realizing I was gay; I remember the heartbreak I felt when I thought I could no longer have any kind of spiritual life. This heartbreak hardened into an intense hatred of the religious right and its brand of “Christianity.” (I put that in quotes because I think they are not actually Christian, as the religion they practice bears little resemblance to what Christ actually talks about.)

Of course, over time, I recovered an openness to the divine (or God/the universal flow/creator/etc). I realized that the televangelists and so-called moral folk filling those huge mega churches did not own god.

Back to Psalm 4. The first verse goes like this:

Answer me when I call, O God of my right!

You gave me room when I was in distress.

Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.

Now the first time I read this, I instantly labeled it irritating and skipped over it. But I love Psalm 3, and they are right next to each other, so I’d always finish loving 3 and crash into that ridiculous first line of 4. The psalmist sounds like a stalker girlfriend, or my mom when I was 5: “Answer me when I call!”  And: “O God of my right” sounds so…arrogant. Like you have some special right to God¹?

I’ve been doing this practice for a while now and a lot of my fellow seminarians (and the professor/pastor types) talk about engaging with the stuff in the Bible (or I’d argue, with anything) that really bugs you because your passionate response can lead to insight or action.  This mirrors what one of my spiritual guide-folk once told me: “Pay attention to where your resistance is.”

The psalms, which are essentially poems that were written (or more accurately, collected from oral traditions) across hundreds of years, are a record of the wide range of human emotions. And they are a record of the very human relationship of a community with the divine. When I pray the psalms (by memorizing, meditating on them and speaking them), I have to use words that I’d rather not use. In some ways, it forces me to recognize emotions of my own I’d rather ignore. And the repetition of the words hammers through my various defenses.

For example, this morning I tackled Psalm 4.  Inhale. Answer me when I call, O God of my right. Wince. Exhale. You gave me room when I was in distress. (The translation of this is having room, as in not being trapped or hemmed in). Ok. Inhale. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. Exhale, huh? Repeat.

For about 45 minutes I sat with this verse. Slowly, I began to identify that my big problem with “Answer me when I call, O God of my right” was tied up in a deep pain of my own. My first thought: who does this guy think he is? Led to: wow, she’s pretty confident that the universe is listening. Led to: That’s pretty audacious, to call on the universe and think it’s your right. Which led to: Well, sure I think people should be able to confidently call on the universe/God to help them in times of need. Which led to: but what about me? Why don’t I think I have the right to call on God (or, the loving universe) and believe she/he/it would welcome and support me? And then I kinda cried. Hate that.

One of the things I’ve always struggled with is my actual right to exist. Sounds silly, but frequently I feel like I shouldn’t be here. Or if I should, I should be really, really quiet, and draw as little attention to myself as I can. There’s often that little voice in my head that hisses: Who do you think you are, anyway? You have nothing important to say. You don’t count. Other people can ask for help, but not you. You don’t deserve help (or love, or happiness, or, or, or…).  

I sometimes react to this by thinking: well I don’t need help/love/sense of belonging anyways. But I think this is my reaction to heartbreak: withdraw, don’t ask, try not to need. All of this, of course, works against my having an expansive, loving life.  It also keeps me from asking for justice – either for myself, or for other people.

This realization makes me wonder how much of my resistance to the “annoying” psalms is related to my perception of who wrote the poem and where they are speaking from, and to whom.  And this makes me angry with the religious right and their historical ilk (again) for appropriating a religion that is based on the love of god, personal transformation and social transformation, and perverting it into a religion of oppression and smug self-righteousness. Not that I have any opinions on that….

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¹Now, there are some people who really don’t like the idea of a “person” god, and I totally get that. When I say God, I really don’t mean Papa (or Mommy) in the fluffy white clouds. My reality is that God/Spirit/Universe/Celestial Wonder Dog/Big Giant Spiritual Reality is way too big for me to wrap my brain around. So, I’m going to just use the word God here. (Please see previous entry on what I mean when I say that.)

Miniatures

Some mornings, my roommate and I write poems. Lately we’ve been doing my exercise of recipe poems – basically, take a recipe and use the ingredients list or some of the supplementary material as a launch points. (I’ve got about a chapbook’s worth of these…)

Yesterday was “corn risotto” but the side bar about baby corn was more interesting and made me think about miniatures…(the rule with these exercises is that you have to finish in 15 minutes and not revise, at least not right away, it’s more like a game, less like high art…) For example:

I used to love miniatures.

When Gulliver was tiny, giants built him toy houses and stitched doll clothes.

When you are miniature, no one sees you, but you can hide in convenient places and

watch them – be privy to stories you shouldn’t know and secrets you don’t have to do anything about.

 And nothing you do matters, because it will be so small.

You can protect yourself against cats with

            straight pins and knitting needles

And never have to do bills

            because you are too small to cost much.

And everything you have -  thread spool tables, toothpick fence posts, thimble cups –

 is stolen,

(laws are made for bigger people.)

You can have wonderful adventures in Christmas villages

                        and on toy train models

(Though remember, your world is bound by a season or a circle)

Never mind: see how pretty the Christmas lights are?

The snow isn’t even cold (though cotton makes for lousy snowballs)

And eating your body weight in gumdrops is easy.

I think the thing that occurred to me is how I think I’ve been living a miniature life in some ways. I’ve heard that the definition of humility is being right-sized – being neither too small, nor too big. Historically, I’ve struggled with trying to dodge attention, or grab too much of it. Like most addicts, I tend to either try to be the best or the worst. I remember hearing a woman in a meeting once, praying to be one of many – a friend among friend, a worker among workers. She didn’t mean it in a mediocre way. But I think there is some significant value in trying to be the (metaphoric) size you are.

Sometimes, it’s easier to be mini-me.

So, the psalm of the day is #19, and the first section goes like this:  “The heavens are telling the glory of God;/and the firmament proclaims his handiwork./Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge./There is no speech, nor are there words;/their voice is not heard;/yet their voice goes out through all the earth,/and their words to the end of the world.”

What struck me here was that in just being, the heavens, day and night, all attest to the glory of the divine. Like the silent praise that is implicit in just being who we are created to be. (Anything less would mess up the big sing. ;-)

(I know this entry is a little slight, but I wanted to get back into posting. More soon...)

A Tiny Bit on Genesis

So you know: Genesis? Funny. Plus, it reads like a soap opera, minus the alien abduction.

It starts with two creation stories. I just attended a three-hour lecture partly focusing on this and I’ll share some of the more academic gems with you all soon (when I’m not coming off a twelve-hour day). But I wanted to just note this one thing, because I kinda love it.

The second creation story has this really sweet verse (for those who are following along at home, this is Genesis 2:19):

¹⁹So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

The thing I love about this is that it is as if God is playing with her new creation – like she’s all excited to see what the man is going to call each animal. I imagine it, God totally having fun and cracking up when man comes up with things like platypus or orangutan (or whatever they are in the “original” translation…)

The context of the verse is also funny (here’s the whole thing 2:18-20):

¹⁸Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” ¹⁹So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.

I also think it’s kind of endearing that the God in this section is not only worried about the man being alone, but that his first move is to create animals and birds. It’s only after the man names and rejects all the animals as helper/partner that woman was made. Now I know there is a lot of possibility for snark here, but that’s not why I brought it up. Sometimes it’s fun to think of a God that doesn’t know the whole plan first and is having a wicked good time experimenting.