Psalm 1: 1-6

It is one of those “How can that be true?” true stories. On the day when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s mother, Sara, died, the weather was clear and calm with nary a breeze in Hyde Park, New York, and on the large Springwood estate where FDR had grown up along the Hudson River. Yet a few moments after Sara died at Springwood on September 7, 1941, one of the largest oak trees on the estate inexplicably crashed to the ground. Small wonder: in life, Sara Delano Roosevelt was like a well-planted oak. She was firm resolved, fierce, and utterly confident in her only son, Franklin. Sara was a force to reckon with...

Jim Taylor is a Canadian journalist and writer. He reflected on the Psalms and said that the problem we face is that the world has changed in 3000 years. It is not so much that the language of the Psalms is a problem; it is the images and metaphors in the Psalms that can be a challenge. We don’t live in a time of warrior kings and invading armies and sheep and shepherds. So he wrote a little book called Everyday Psalms in which he paraphrases the Psalms using language and images of today. This is his take on Psalm 1: Happiness can’t be captured. Like a wild bird or a bouncing ball, It is always just beyond your grasp. It is not found in fads or fashions, nor in climbing to the top of the heap. Happiness comes from immersing yourself in God. Instead of struggling to stay on top, Yield yourself to the deep flow of God’s universe. You will not drown, You will be swept along by forces beyond your imagining. Foam on the surface blows about; Driftwood piles up on sandbars; People obsessed with themselves end up as rotting debris on rocks. But the current rolls on. To find happiness, let yourself be carried away by something stronger than a social eddy.

“Look!” exclaimed Tyson as he ran into the house. “I found a bird that can’t fly. Can I keep it, Mom? I found this old cage in the garage.” Tyson’s mother looked closely at the bird. “It’s a sparrow, Tyson,” she said. “I suppose you can keep it a few days to see if its wing will heal.” “Okay.” Tyson nodded. “I’ll let it go soon. Do sparrows sing?” Mom smiled. “Oh, they cheep and twitter,” she replied. “Well, I’ll put it right next to Biddy’s cage,” Tyson decided. “Biddy has a beautiful song. She can teach the sparrow to sing.” A few days later, the sparrow’s wing seemed fine. “Good thing,” Tyson told his mother as he took it out to release it. “Instead of this bird learning to sing like a canary, Biddy’s been starting to sound like the sparrow!”...

Something about Psalm 1’s imagery of the wicked being finally nothing but chaff that blows away in the wind reminded me of the film version conclusion of the Harry Potter cycle of stories. Throughout the novels the figure of “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” (but who did have the name of Voldemort) loomed large. He was evil, he was strong, he was a master wizard and seemed absolutely indomitable and fierce. Yet in Voldemort’s final battle with Harry and after Harry and friends had managed to dispose of all those piece of Voldemort’s soul that he had squirreled away in various objects (the last piece residing in his pet snake), once Voldemort’s fatal death curse rebounds back onto himself, it turns out there is nothing to him after all. He literally dissolves into what looks like flimsy ash and paper that very simply blows away on the breeze. He had been nothing after all...

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I recently decided to take a look at John McCain’s funeral at Washington Cathedral, not really intending to watch the whole thing. But I was captivated and watched the whole service. In a culture increasingly marked by tribalism, division, and enmity, the McCain funeral was a strong counter-liturgy. It urged a return to bi-partisanship, cooperation, and unity of purpose. It told a different story about America than the story of fear, division, and and animosity so prevalent today. Amazingly, the funeral was shown on almost all the networks simultaneously. There was a shared feeling that this was something we needed to reshape ourselves and our nation. And surprisingly to me, this was not merely a cultural liturgy, it was set in the context of the Christian liturgy, the hymns, prayers, and Scriptures of which told a different story, called us to live in a different drama.

A man by the name of Bryan Anderson was driving home late one night along a lonely stretch of highway when he noticed a woman standing by a car at the side of the road. She was an older woman and looked like she needed help. Bryan pulled his old truck over and got out to see if he could lend a hand. The woman looked frightened as Bryan walked toward her, but he smiled, introduced himself and asked if he could be of any assistance. She told him that she was on her way home and had a flat tire. She said that she couldn’t get any reception on her cell phone, so she couldn’t call for help. Bryan looked at the tire on the lady’s fancy new car and he told her he would do what he could to change it for her...

Few farm chores were traditionally more onerous than putting oats into storage. After all, oat chaff has a tendency to fly everywhere. Even the tiniest puff of breeze can send chaff swirling to land on a person’s clothing, as well as in her hair, eyes, nose and even open mouth. Sweat serves as a kind of adhesive that glues the chaff to skin. Such chaff feels very prickly once it’s latched onto human skin. The psalmist compares wicked people to such bothersome chaff. She suggests that they’re so insubstantial that even the slightest hint of a breeze blows them “away.” Might it be too much of a stretch to suggest that their relative weightlessness also renders wicked people a nuisance to the people around them?

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I am not only my lights, my strengths, my gifts, my virtues, my ability, I am also my shadow. I am my failures, I am my fears, I am those potholes that I keep falling into. I am all of the above. So, the issue is not how do we get rid of these shadows, these unconscious elements of ourselves, these parts of of ourselves that have power over us but we don’t recognize the parts, we don’t know how to name the which gives them even more power. The issue is not getting ride of them, the issue is becoming so self-aware about them that they no longer have the kind of power that they have when they operate unconsciously...