Psalm 126

Year C - Lent⁵ or Conviction⁵

March 13, 2016

Psalm 126

Continuing with Norman Fischer’s Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms—

I am struck with the pattern:

           Great happenings

           Have happened to them

           The ones who have struggled

           Long with the questions

and 

           Great things would have happened to us

           And we would be dizzy with the joy of them

One implication is that we don’t stick with our important questions long enough for them to come to a time of resolution. Likewise we don’t stick with our important sufferings long enough. Had we been able to sustain our questions and refused to short-circuit our sufferings, Joy would shine through.

Always we are distracted. Always we are in the midst of confusion. While looking for a way through we keep dropping the very keys that would bring us from our enclosures, our habits, to live as laughing and singing dreamers. These keys are questions and suffering where “Our tears our joy’s seed” are planted and we honor them all they way through to a bountiful harvest.

This is all too pretty and naive in a hard world of haves and have-nots and distraction and entertainment are the bread and circuses of our time. Yet, thus has it ever been so. So shift and don’t give up too soon.