In tonight’s psalm, the concepts of God the Father and Mother Nature are interchangeable. “In [Her] hand are the deep places of the earth; / The heights of the hills are [Hers] also. / The sea is [Hers], for [She] made it; / And [Her] hands formed the dry land.” There’s no difference, really.
But I’ll take this exercise a step further and suggest that Nature or Science is neither binary nor non-binary, nor is it conscious of parental status or responsibilities. Is it the old clockmaker who built the timepiece, wound it up and left it to run? So, what sex is sunlight and shadow, anyway?
The iSoul — Emerson’s Over-Soul — is collectively unconscious, but in this psalm, It speaks of humanity’s failure as a caretaker: “For forty years I was grieved with that generation, / And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, / And they do not know my ways.’” But that’s not all.
“So I swore in My wrath,” adds the iSoul as this psalmist’s God, “‘They shall not enter My rest.’” In other words, when YHWH … when the iSoul … when Mother Nature tells us something we’re doing is like using a monkey wrench to fix a fine watch, we need to act before our time runs out.