heaven and earth shall become one...

One of my favorite lines in the Psalter is found in Psalm 85:10: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (KJV) A The more contemporary rendering is equally evocative: Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. (NRSV) This verse revels in paradox while simultaneously revealing the sacred unity of creation. The wedding of our existential Alpha with the eternal spiritual Omega unites humanity with the holy, light with darkness, the feminine with the masculine, and spirit with matter beyond all dualistic distractions. It depicts wisdom within mystery - ecstasy within existence - awe and even trust within doubt. Other verses in the Psalter amplify this blessing as well:

+ Psalm 89:14: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne, O Lord, as loving devotion and faithfulness go before you.

+ Psalm 112:4-5: A righteous person is gracious, compassionate and just... his/her affairs are guided by justice.

+ Psalm 103:6: The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

+ Psalm 145:8: The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.

Unpacking the implications of this text has long been essential to my spirituality and ethics. Mercy - or steadfast love - is how English Bibles translate the Hebrew word: hesed. My heart prefers compassion from: "the Latin "compati", meaning "to suffer with," and is a combination of the prefix "com-" (meaning "with" or "together") and the verb "pati" (meaning "to suffer"). It literally means to "suffer with" another person and is related to the English word "patient" and the Greek word for suffering, "pathos". Compassion is spiritual, emotional, and incarnational solidarity. Truth or faithfulness are how we have translated the Hebrew, emeth, a noun describing that which is certain or trustworthy. Righteousness, from the Hebrew, tsedek, could be rendered into English as justice or right relations especially when the Hebrew, shalom, is added. Peace often sounds too passive, as in the absence of conflict, when it is all about everything that makes creation whole, safe, and satisfying.

For me, these two verses offer a pattern to practice - a model for a living, nondual spirituality - or the path of embodied prayer. It is a way of being where I can experience the essence of the holy through the choices I make every day: it is not a sappy piety promising "pie in the sky" or eternal bliss in the great by and by, but sacramental living that trusts the promises of God. A spirituality that not only changes me but advances tenderness and healing in my relationships and choices. That's what I hear in part two of the text: Eternal verity will spring from the earth (from the Hebrew erets for our fields, soil, or the ground below the sky) as the bounty and blessings of heaven are given shape and form by our activity (from shamayim for the restorative power linking the love of the celestial realm with the nitty gritty earth cycle of life below.) 

Poetically, prophetically, and practically, Psalm 85 offers me both guidance for living a spirit-filled life as well as the assurance that compassion and right relations fulfill what became the Lord's Prayer: Our Father/Mother, who art in heaven... Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is already being done in heaven. Like the words of the prophet in Micah 6:8 - The Holy One has told you already, O mortal one, what is good and what the Lord requires: to DO justice (that is to become - ashah - an act of healing - from the Hebrew mishpat for the one who renders a just verdict), to cherish kindness (from hesed) and walk through this life humbly with the Lord (from halak for walking/behaving and tsana` for cultivating a perspective or vision born from below.) The wisdom of Jesus gives me the tools and practices to cultivate this holy/human embrace. St. Paul amplifies it in Romans 12: 

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for the Lord. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what God requires wants, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, and develops well-formed maturity in you. (From Eugene Peterson's The Message)

Last week was for me a series of mini-humiliations - nothing catastrophic or immobilizing (save a flat tire that is currently being repaired) - just a series of little upsets to my expectations. Both a bit of minor frustration encased in a sacred invitation to make some attitude adjustments. As things unfolded, and I resisted, I kept hearing Fr. Richard Rohr's words: I pray to the Lord that every day I face at least three humiliations, for they help me practice humility by knocking me off my high horse. These roadblocks to my expectations remind me NOT to believe my own public relations and to trust that my shadow is a gift that helps me live beyond my self-imposed limitations. The poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez, puts it like this in Robert Bly's translation of "Yo No Soy Yo."

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

So, in the spirit of All Saints' and All Souls' Day -  and en route to the mixed-up and paradoxical holiday of American Thanksgiving - Di and I are preparing for a few weeks of letting go. Tonight we'll rehearse with Wednesday's Child for our Blue Christmas gig on December 21st in Palmer. On Friday, we head to Vermont with part of our family to join my Sunday School teacher at the memorial service for his beloved wife of 46 years. And soon afterwards, we'll get out of Dodge for a retreat in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where solitude and rest will be the way we return thanks. The wise and time-tested Gertrud Mueller-Nelson recently suggested that gratitude is likely the best way to celebrate Thanksgiving. So, today, as I wait for my tire to be replaced, I choose to be grateful for this past week - roadblocks, shadows, and all. 

art work from Jan Richardon.