Pentecost +23 Sunday – C2

Pentecost +23 Sunday – C2

Year C
Psalm 119:137-144 or Psalm 32:1-7

We do indeed desire an understanding that will enable us to live. A part of the religious struggle is how to use this desire. Is it limited to control of our lives and our environment? If so, how does it ever grow, for the way in which we use control is to limit change? Is it intended to be continually ahead of us and so our task is more to learn how to learn than it is to memorize the overload of what has come down to us. If so, how do we deal with the constancy of change that will lead us beyond creedal words, for our response to change is to slow it down to manageable bits?

It seems we can either deal with “decrees righteous for ever” or with “understanding”, but not both at the same time. To stand between them is to put one at risk of cognitive dissonance and every other kind of soul-wrenching experience that can be imagined.

In some sense there needs to be a division between G*D and ourselves as well as a unity. G*D needs “forever” space and we need growth-in-learning space. It is important not to confuse these two and meld them too closely together.

Likewise we can’t try to hold together an image of G*D being a hiding place as well as a one that surrounds us with glad cries. We are no longer hidden if being exulted over. We cannot be celebrated while still being hidden away.

= = = = = = =

trouble and anguish have come
and come and come
again and again
we wonder how can we last

finding a beauty of righteousness
again and again
brings us closer and closer
to a delight larger than failure

to a larger vision of tomorrow
nearer and nearer
we turn again and again
until it is vision no longer

then external decrees
and internal understanding
again and again
dance with one another