Half Fast Living @gaillardiapress.com

This psalm reminds me of that maddening call and response I hear all the time in church: “God is good … all the time. / And all the time … God is good.” It is maddening because it is not true.

This psalm is 21 verses of how mighty, glorious, splendid, majestic, wondrous, awesome, great, good, righteous, gracious, compassionate, patient, merciful and powerful YHWH seemed to be.

Back to the call and response, the bit I question is the “all the time” part. As I’ve said before, the cosmos is both good and bad all the time — what’s good for me may be bad for you. That’s true.

So, while YHWH might have been all those adjectives to the Old Hebrews including kings David and Solomon, He was just the opposite to any innocents who died at the hands of His Israelites.

Well, here we go again. Just when I begin to think David might have an ounce of humanity in him after all, his next psalm goes off the deep end — or maybe it’s just the psalmist he chose.

Violence, xenophobia, paranoia — this psalm has it all, as if David hasn’t covered that ground umpteen times before. In fact, the psalmist plagiarizes umpteen other psalms to write this one.

The best lines here — also copied from other psalms — are the Q & A: “Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him?”; then, “Man is like a breath; / His days are like a passing shadow.”

The psalmist closes by listing the many things that would make him happy — healthy sons and daughters (stacked like “pillars”), full barns and fields, no break-ins, and no rioting in the streets.

“Happy are the people who are in such a state,” the psalmist says, surely not referring to Florida or Texas. “Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!” There again, that’s treading a fine line.

Fifty years ago John Lennon sang, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” I never fully understood that line until today when I read this psalm, despite the pain that I’ve endured.

Young David says, “[The enemy] has made me dwell in darkness, / Like those who have long been dead. / Therefore, my spirit is overwhelmed within me; / My heart within me is distressed.”

And still he prays, “I remember the days of old; / I meditate on all Your works; / I muse on the work of Your hands. / I spread out my hands to You; / My soul longs for You like a thirsty land.”

On our pedestals, we keep on playing those mind games long after we realize that “in [God’s] sight no one living is righteous.” But we can be working class heroes and dreamers. Imagine.

This psalm’s superscription is “A Contemplation of David. A Prayer when he was in the cave” — like when Tom and Becky, or Andy and Helen were trapped in caves and needed to be rescued.

Those fictional folks, though, were together in the dark, and the shepherd boy who would be the king was all alone — that is, until he cried out to YHWH and was joined by about 400 other men.

The cave then became David’s fortress and the rebels became his army as they overthrew King Saul. But this prayer reveals young David’s dark thoughts in solitude while his fate is undecided.

“I pour out my complaint before [the Lord],” David says. “I declare before Him my trouble.” So it’s OK to gripe when stuff doesn’t go our way? And again he resorts to a tired old “snare” metaphor.

“Deliver me from my persecutors,” prays Dave of the Cave, “For they are stronger than I.” I’ll bet he wouldn’t have said that out loud if he’d been alone with Becky or Helen — or with Bathsheba.

This isn’t an epiphany to anyone but me — this “Psalm of David” wasn’t written by the paranoid king whom I’ve come to know in this book of songs.

This 10-verse psalm is a humble prayer unlike all the others coming before it. I might have liked King David, if he had used this ghostwriter all along.

“Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth,” the psalmist says. “Keep watch over the door of my lips.” He also declines to “eat of [wicked men’s] delicacies.”

The figurative language alone tells me that this prayer was penned by a better poet than David. This guy knows his way around a metaphor or simile.

“Let the righteous strike me,” fake David adds. “It shall be a kindness. / And let him rebuke me; / It shall be as excellent oil; / Let my head not refuse it.”

Wrapping up his petition, David’s scribe observes, “Our bones are scattered at the mouth of the grave, / As when one plows and breaks up the earth.”

And finally, “Let the wicked fall into their own [snares], / While I escape freely.” Yes, there it is — the paranoia. But this time it’s psychosis with some style.

The politics of an Old Hebrew tribal king must have been pure hell — or pure Sheol, rather. So, maybe things haven’t changed all that much. Here, again, David is whining about his enemies.

The first line is all he needs to say (for the umpteenth time): “Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men.” But he takes 12 more verses to bitch and moan about the bad things being done to him by foes.

Nowadays we all know that bigmouthed bigots who lie, cheat, steal, rape and pillage their tribes make the best kings — or so say eight out of 10 of our psalm-singing brethren. Oh, God help us.

But do those folks really believe what they claim? I don’t think so. In yesterday’s psalm, the singer-songwriter begged YHWH to get rid of his wicked opponents because they “take Your name in vain.”

Now it’s all in good fun, like the corrupt carnival barker who said (four years ago in Greenville, N.C.): “If you don’t support me, you’re going to be so goddamn poor you’re not going to believe it.” Say what?

I’ll just let today’s psalmist — presumably David himself — close with these lines: “Let not a slanderer be established in the earth; / Let evil hunt the violent man to overthrow him.” Yes, please.

This is the anti-abortion psalm, used to argue that life begins at conception: “For You formed my inward parts; / You covered me in my mother’s womb,” the Old Hebrew psalmist says to YHWH.

Then, the psalmist adds, “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. / And in Your book they all were written, / The days fashioned for me, / When as yet there were none of them.” Oh?

But there’s more. This particular “Psalm of David” speaks to YHWH’s omniscience: “For there is not a word on my tongue, / But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.” YAH is always listening.

Also, to YHWH’s omnipresence: “If I take the wings of the morning, / And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, / Even there Your hand shall lead me….” I’ve read that in quite another context.

The first two lines — the ninth verse — are the epitaph of another man who thought he could fly above the law, not just ours, but those of his god and all humanity, as well as his marriage vows.

Those words are chiseled into a flat, gray stone marking a grave covered by volcanic gravel and wilted leis, in a humble churchyard sitting steps from the most awe-inspiring view I’ve ever seen.

Charles Lindbergh — famed aviator, American hero — was an antisemite and Nazi sympathizer in the 1930s and ‘40s, forming seven lives with his three German “wives” in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Whoever said, “Be sure your sins will find you out and your chickens come home to roost,” didn’t know how lucky Lindy was, because this fellow with no fear of flying got to die on his own terms.

Men like Lindbergh — I hesitate to call them “great” — should read this entire psalm, not just the lines they like; then they’d realize that life is more than a fertilized egg, or even a frozen embryo.

The telling verse is this sniveling psalm is the sixth one: “Though the Lord is on high, / Yet He regards the lowly; / But the proud He knows from afar.”

Does that sound like any reality you know? I’m not referring to plans; I’m referring to practices. Are the lowly well regarded? And are the proud put off?

You may say, no, but that isn’t God’s plan. And my response would be, well, if you’re waiting for Him to act, you’d best put the plan into practice yourself.

The great F. Scott Fitzgerald must have visited this psalm — “By the rivers of Babylon” — once or twice. It’s about being a poor artist among the beautiful and damned on this side of paradise.

Like the psalmist, Scott knew how it felt to dance around the rich and powerful crowd of his day. He used his talent to make himself part of the Lost Generation, like Zelda, Gertrude and Ernest.

But unlike the Ancient Hebrew psalmist, who would not play and sing for his Babylonian captors, Scott churned out the words and “razed” not Babylon around him, but instead destroyed himself.

Here’s another copycat psalm, this one repeating whole lines from yesterday’s song. The big difference is that it’s a call and response, with a line that loses its meaning through repetition.

This psalm recounts YHWH’s triumphs on behalf of His people: Creation, the Exodus, military victories over Pharaoh of Egypt, King Sihon of the Amorites and King Og of Bashan (no joke).

And then there’s the line about YHWH that’s repeated over and over and over again: “For His mercy endures forever.” But what does that line mean? Would Pharaoh, Sihon and Og agree?

What, then, is mercy “[t]o Him who made great lights … [t]he sun to rule by day … [t]he moon and stars to rule by night”? After all, day and night are relative depending on where you stand.

Repeatedly, David’s psalms have shown that YAH was merciful only to David himself, mooning over the liar, rapist, murderer and king when He should have been more like the merciless sun.