Psalm 27:1, 4-9

Year A - Epiphany 3 or Guiding Gift³

January 26, 2014

Psalm 27:1, 4-9

Ahh, the desire of beauty and learning. These are worthy seekings.

For now, though, remember your Purloined Letter? What might it be to be hidden in a day of trouble (today)? How is one hidden both under a tent and at a high remove? How does one not be noticed while singing their head off? Perhaps we need to ask the Shadow who knew how to work in the face of the evil that “lurks in the hearts of men” through learning an East Asian technique to cloud the minds of others while going his own way.

Here we are, trying to find a hidden face of G*D while hiding our face in the presence of trouble. Something here needs to shift.

In troublesome times we are not helped by escaping our realities via a deus ex machina but in seeing G*D’s face in the face of our difficulty. To face our difficulty is to step aside from a sense of forsakenness to claim a participation in transforming life. The laboratory or school of beauty is not cosmetology, but a deeper inquiry into what lies beneath our current dis-ease and beyond our divisions. In this we will find our orientation changing from “my salvation” to “our salvation”.

This beauty of inquiry is our life-line to not becoming an enemy or holding on to an enemy, but to join and transpose/modulate an ancient melody to a new song. “Modulation is the essential part of the art. Without it there is little music, for a piece derives its true beauty not from the large number of fixed modes which it embraces but rather from the subtle fabric of its modulation.”—Charles-Henri Blainville (1767)