The Company We Keep with Psalm 1

Have you been traumatized by religion? In today's episode, I'll tell my personal story about religious trauma and the impact it had on my life. 

I'll also read the first Psalm as we begin our journey through the Psalms together. Each week I will read every seventh Psalm with a story from my personal experiences to go with it. Thank you for listening! 

For more information about me and my work please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

#podcast #spirituality #episcopal #history #prayer #love #ministry #interviews #christianity #contemplative #meditation #Bible #Bible reading #religion #Bible study

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Loving the Imperfect Podcast, a show for all the imperfect laypeople and seekers of deeper contemplation. I'm Breanne Terzinski. For 10 years, I've been studying offerings from holy teachers and holy texts. I'm a journalist who has listened to the stories of many people throughout the years, and so I thought it was my turn, to share a thing or two about my journey and my thoughts on scripture and holy work from different faith traditions and practices, mostly from Sufi teachers, Buddhists, and Christian mystics. So join me as we imperfectly and clumsily make our way through each day, mustering up compassion for the person who honked at us this morning on our daily commute and some words of love for the hours ahead. Hello, and welcome back to Loving the Imperfect Podcast. Uh, This is going to be the first Psalm. We're going to go ahead and read it. It is written by an anonymous author. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take. Or sit in the company of mocks, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit and season. And whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked, bare like chaff, that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous. But the way of the wicked leads to destruction. Okay. So, in most of these recordings, you'll hear my dog breathing in the background. He's sitting here next to me, sleeping. So, I'll try to edit it out, but if you hear it, that is what that is, that breathing noise. Just the life, enjoying life. Okay. Alright, so Psalm 1, the first psalm, was written by an anonymous person. It is said that after the time of David and Solomon, these psalms were written by unknown people. The psalms, like I've said before, are songs of praise. And we read them today as poetry. Though some people do put the psalms back into music. If you're looking for, or you're curious about the music of Jerusalem, what the music sounded like back then in the time of Jesus, I would suggest listening to the album called, it's called Ancient Echoes, music from the time of Jesus and Jerusalem's second temple. And it's by the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble. They have a beautiful rendition of the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic which was Jesus language. It's the ancient language of the Chaldeans, I think. And it's called Abun. And They have a spoken version and then one with accompaniments. So both are beautiful. Let's, let us talk now about the first song. My study Bible here points, My study Bible here points to the first verse that says it says, Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, or stand in the way sinners take. Okay, so it's basically telling you be careful of the friends you keep. And I wouldn't get too caught up in this language, this language that the Bible uses. When it says sin, sin at its very base definition means to miss the mark. So, if we're going to miss the mark, we're acting in selfishness in some way. That's how, that's how I define it through all my readings and research and prayers and everything. I've found that selfishness is the ultimate way to miss the mark. But to act in love and selflessness is a way to hit that mark dead on. So anyways I wanted to tell you a little story. That sort of reminded, when I was reading this, I was sort of thinking about this part of my life about the company that you keep. So when I was a little girl, I had a friend in my neighborhood with whom I played often. And she talked about God a lot. Was always trying to save me, quote unquote save me. So after days of her begging me go through with this ceremony of being saved, I would allow her a makeshift ceremony, accepting Jesus into my heart, and then we'd continue playing with dolls or whatever it is we were doing. Until the next month or the next year when she would forget that she saved me and she would try again to save me. And I didn't really mind this it was just her weird little quirk, I thought. And it was annoying, though, to have your friend, who is supposed to like you just as you are, to repeatedly think that you are so vile, you know, seven year old, so vile. That you must be saved multiple times in your life. But, I was used to this kind of talk because my grandpa was the same way. I loved my grandpa very much. But again, it's insulting when you suspect you're not fully accepted, just as you are. That something about you needs to change to be fully loved and accepted by these people that you trust to love you, unconditionally. So my grandpa would take us shopping each year for our birthdays, my brothers and me separately, so we would be alone with him. And getting into his car, he would lock his doors, and there I'd be trapped. And the conversation started off well. What I did in school that day, sports I played, golf came up occasionally, because I played golf and he played golf, and I would ask him about golf and stuff. Then he would cleverly turn the whole conversation into talking about the Lord, and he always referred to God as the Lord, or Jesus as the Lord. And the vibe would change completely. And his grip on the steering wheel became tighter, and his eyes would stare off at the road, but past the road, and I suspected he imagined himself on a stage, preaching to thousands. And I had disappeared completely. No longer, I was no longer relevant to the conversation at all. And he would say like, we were all going to hell. He'd say, if we don't surrender our lives to the Lord, we're going to hell. There was no arguing with him either. He was so far gone. And I would just sit there and keep my rebuttals light and funny. And in the end, he'd laugh and we, and I always made him feel like he was winning the conversation. Like he was winning me over because he was nuts. And I knew he was nuts. You can't argue with people like that. And so, my philosophy on dealing with him was to help him feel like he was doing a good job. Like his words were getting to me. I didn't care about proving anything to him. But, I did put my foot down when, after we had shopped a while, he would take me out to lunch or dinner. And he did this multiple times, like every year for my birthday. And so he'd take me out to a public restaurant, and so I'd put my foot down because he would make me pray before, when we got our meal, and before, and pray in public. Because I felt he was only doing that to make a show of it for other people and not for God, really, in my perspective, from my perspective. It didn't feel genuine. And so when I pulled my hand away from his at the dinner table at these restaurants and I would shake my head no, like I'm not going to do that. I would prefer if he, He really wants to pray that both of us pray in silence, you know. So I'd pull my hand away from his and I'd shake my head no to his public vocal prayer. And he knew at that point, we both kind of looked at each other, and he knew that all of his work in the car with me on the way to the mall had been for naught. And so I would get a double dosing. of sermons on my way home. And his words did get to me after a while, after years of this, because his words were filled with hate and judgment and fear. The God and Jesus my grandpa painted were contrary to my vision of God and Jesus. Who were my friends and my companions. So when my grandpa died, I read the whole Bible. To see for myself where all this hate talk had come from. So. I had to read the whole Bible. And I've read it now three times. And it was just to sort of use that knowledge as peaceful ammunition. Against people that would persecute people using that book and there's another story on why I read the Bible, but I won't tell you that right now okay, so I read the whole Bible to see for myself where he had come up with all this hate talk particularly against the LBGTQ community and people of other religions. So I wanted to use his own weapon against him, right? But even that wouldn't have penetrated his hardened heart. And he was now dead. So I couldn't, you know, that's the sad part about this is he died. And then I decided to read the Bible, but I know now that even if I would have read it, then he still would not have listened to me. My knowledge, wouldn't have penetrated his hardened heart. I loved my grandpa, but he left a trail of destruction behind him on his so called path to righteousness. So, in this first psalm, yes, we have to be careful about the company we keep. Even if our friends and family are seemingly on the right path, we have to ask ourselves, is their path one of peace and love and acceptance of all people? And that's what I learned being around people like my grandpa and that friend I had when I was little. You have to listen very carefully to the language people use, and that will help you discern. whether or not those are people you want to spend your life with. So the whole experience with my grandpa, I know it left my brothers in me with religious trauma. We can discern whether or not these people are good for us. When we listen to their language or we watch them with the eyes and we hear them with the ears of the heart and we watch them with the eyes of the heart. And, and first we will go on our sensations, right? What feeling do these people give us? And after doing that for a long time, you will be infused with that sort of spirit. So it won't be so much sensations anymore, but you will, you'll be on sort of an autopilot and you'll know whether or not to get involved with people or not. And the way that you do it is this, I'll give you an example. And I want you to really, really do this if you're curious. Go, and I'll talk more on this place later maybe, but I want you to Go to the Westboro Baptist Church website, or at least search them up and try to find their actual website and look at their website address. And I want you to read that website address and, while you're doing that, feel the sensation in your heart and in your gut. And that is really the soul sort of knocking at your door and communicating with you. And God's communicating with you that way. So, I know that you'll feel something when you see that address. So, that is how you start to notice, to discern. So this psalm teaches us to be careful, to ask ourselves, is their path one of peace and love and acceptance of all people? This question is what we need to ask ourselves before we step into any religious communities or work environments or friendships. And there is much more to say about all of this, but for now I'll just leave you with that so until next time, okay, thank you so much for coming and stopping by and listening and more stories to come and hopefully some interviews so you're not just listening to my voice all the time. All right. Have a good day. Bye bye.