So, why have I spent the past seven months of weekdays writing about the Book of Psalms and posting my own poems about them? I mean, I’ve probably lost some of my 100 “friends” over it. Nope, no one unfriended me, but I’ll bet I’ve been put to sleep — that is, “snoozed” — by a few.
I got the idea to study the Psalms last summer, really, after songwriter Paul Simon released his latest album, “Seven Psalms.” Though we’d once shared an elevator ride with him in Manhattan, I knew him only for his big hits. But his new songs are special, a sort of sacred “elevator” music.
Also, over the past few years, I’ve been working on a novel all my own about two brothers who get along with each other like Cain and Abel, or like Jacob and Esau — you know, a pair of Old Testament sibs who love each other until it hurts. Part One is finished. Now I’m writing Part Two.
Both of these brothers are ministers — men of the cloth — except one is wealthy and prefers to wear a fancy suit with his red baseball cap, while the other is as poor as Job’s turkey and wears whatever he finds that fits. The poor fellow also focuses on praise rather than on condemnation.
That is where studying the Psalms came in — what I’d always thought were songs of praise, not hate-filled paeans to paranoia and genocidal violence. While a select few of the psalms are true works of art, David — the acclaimed author, but a barenaked liar — could not have written them.
There was one last thing that I wanted to do — to work out my own thoughts and feelings about the God to Whom I’ve always prayed, though I’ve always felt like a red-headed stepchild of God. Not even the ancient Hebrews would utter His name. They turned YHWH into a four-letter word.
I have come to believe that Yeshua ben Yosef — or, rather, the lowly Jesus — was exactly right about God or Heaven. It — whatever It’s called — is within every one of us, although It is buried so deeply that we have to dig through layers of lies, greed and pride to find our own good news.
Like the universe around us, our worlds of truth are evolving and will continue to do so ‘til all the spinning stops. Within this spiral galaxy we call home, the views never change, even though the cosmos allows us to drift farther from its center until time or chance makes us stand our ground.