Welcome to Loving the Imperfect Podcast. I’m your host, Brianne Turczynski.
Hello and welcome back today we're going to be reading Psalm 17. It's another long psalm from David. Written when he was being persecuted by Saul.
“Hear me, Lord. My plea is just. Listen to my cry. Hear my prayer. It does not rise from deceitful lips. Let my vindication come to you. May your eyes see what is right. Though you probe my heart, Though you examine me at night and test me, You will find that I have planned no evil. My mouth has not transgressed, though people tried to bribe me.
I have kept myself from the ways of the violent, through what your lips have commanded. My steps have held to your paths. My feet have not stumbled. I call on you, my God. For you will answer me. Turn your ear to me and hear my prayer. Show me the wonders of your great love.
You who save by your right hand. Those who take refuge in you from their foes. Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings. From the wicked who are out to destroy me. From my mortal enemies who surround me. They close up their callous hearts, and their mouths speak with arrogance.
They have tracked me down. They now surround me, with eyes alert to throw me to the ground. They are like a lion hungry for prey. Like a fierce lion crouching in cover. Rise up, Lord. Confront them. Bring them down. With your sword, rescue me from the wicked. By your hand, save me from such people, Lord. From those of this world, whose reward is in this life.
May what you have stored up for the wicked fill their bellies. May their children gorge themselves on it. And may there be leftovers for their little ones. As for me, I will be vindicated and will see your face when I awake. I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness.”
So that wasn't that bad. We've read some violent things from David. He was a warrior. In battle. So, he is familiar with that kind of talk. That’s his kind of talk. It's uncomfortable for me to read some of these psalms from David that are a little bit more violent because I would never write poetry like that myself. So just know that, even though I'm reading it to you, does not mean that I really agree with what he's saying. But his situation was life or death. He was being persecuted by Saul, hunted down because Saul wanted to kill him. I've never been in his situation. Maybe if I was, I would write things that maybe had more serious subject matters.
For those of you who have never read the story of David, it is one of the more entertaining. So, Israel wanted a leader. They had Samuel, who was a prophet, and Samuel pretty much did everything for them, led them, acted as judge, gave them messages, and told them what to do in battle, all based on what response Samuel received from God.
Samuel was a direct go-between. He was the prophet and he acted as the leader of the Israelites all his life. He was getting older, and his sons were not capable of taking over this task. The Israelites came to him and said, “You know, you've got to appoint us a king. You're getting older and we won't know what to do once you're gone.” Samuel was disappointed with this ruling of the Israelites. God said to Samuel. “It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.” Then the Lord through Samuel said, “you know, are you sure you want a king? You realize the minute you appoint a king he will...”
And he rambles off this list of all the things people do when they obtain power.
Exploiting their people, basically. And so, God is telling Samuel to warn the Israelites that once you appoint a king, this is what's going to happen to you. Are you sure?
And the Israelites don't listen to these warnings; they keep pressing Samuel for a king.
By happenstance, Samuel meets Saul. When Samuel lays eyes on Saul, God sort of infuses his heart with this whispering of This is your guy. This is the guy I want you to appoint as the king. So, Saul starts out well, and then he starts to make mistakes and he's clumsy at the job. He's just a terrible choice for a leader. So, Samuel goes out to pursue another choice. He finds David and he anoints David. Meanwhile, Saul is still king, but God's favor is now on David, a humble shepherd.
Saul, it turns out has some sort of mental illness. He realizes that music is very calming for him. And he's looking for somebody to come to him and play the lyre, which is a harp. It's like an ancient harp. Very beautiful. David is a fantastic lyre player, so he comes and plays the lyre for Saul. Meanwhile, we have the story of David and Goliath that happens afterward. And then, David and Jonathan, Jonathan is Saul's son. He and David developed this beautiful friendship. So, David is becoming very close to this family. Meanwhile, Saul's illness is getting worse. And has taken over completely. He appoints David to be a military leader, and because God's favor is on him, everything David does is successful.
And Saul sees how his people really love David more than him, and Saul gets insanely jealous and he tries to kill David. Thus begins the great pursuit this sort of chase where David's running all over the place from Saul and Saul is constantly pursuing him.
And in this turmoil of David's life where he feels abandoned by the people that he thought loved him and he trusted and betrayed by these people in that turmoil, he is building this collection of these beautiful Psalms.
And likewise, St. John of the Cross, if you ever read the story of St. John of the Cross, he was put in prison by the people he trusted, his own religious teachers. They imprisoned him and tortured him, daily.
And he wrote all these beautiful poems, while he was imprisoned. When we feel trapped, if we're in some sort of turmoil situation, we can create beautiful things. If we allow ourselves to go deeper within ourselves, sometimes we can bring forth a lot of beauty that inspires other people. It would be great if we could all get there, to that deeper place, and allow ourselves to heal.
And these psalms, these words, which still read as a source of comfort for sufferers today were the very words David used to comfort himself. So you can see how relevant they are, the nicer verses anyway, because to this day, we still use the verses David wrote as bookmarks, wall hangings, and inscriptions of all kinds that are tattooed on bodies and scraped into trees and benches all over the world.
See, in his turmoil, David had a creative epiphany. He was already the player of a liar. So, we know that he was probably writing his own songs. And so, when he came to Saul, he was probably writing songs. And when he escaped from Saul, he wrote songs and prayers, and these laments to God.
In his turmoil, creativity blossomed. When we go through these sorts of turmoil/hurricane situations, sometimes we do have these creative epiphanies. I know when my life got a little rocky a while back, that's when I dove deeply into writing and produced more work in a week back then than I do now in several months because for me, I had to process my grief through my creativity.
I get so much pleasure out of writing poems lately. Sitting down and writing a poem is as healing and satisfying to me as a warm bowl of chicken soup and besides that, when we produce something, taking the feelings of our inner hearts and bringing them into the light for others to see, hear, feel, taste, and for us to experience as well. It allows us to get to know ourselves and helps us to map out the journeys we've been on in order to teach and articulate for future generations.
And to understand where God or the universe or whatever is guiding you to decide and help us figure out where we're supposed to go next, to discern what our best gifts are. What are our gifts? Sometimes that takes a lifetime for people to figure out what they are good at.
So experimenting with your creativity, currently, for instance, I'm working on a spiritual memoir as a way for me to map out all the times God has sort of shown up in my life. I've had to write several spiritual memoirs when I was discerning the priesthood a couple of years ago.
I had to write one for this monastic community I was thinking about joining. And it was really eye-opening when you start to pinpoint the actual moments God has shown up for you. And I think these Psalms that David writes, he's pinpointing these moments that God showed up for him.
We have the Psalms. He lived through all of that to tell us the story. Life, being like a sea, like an ocean we have to traverse in order to get to the other side or whatever the other side is. Sometimes the ocean is smooth and sometimes it's rocky and sometimes it's a hurricane and sometimes it's a tsunami.
And we never know how to navigate the ship, really. We only know the moment. Every day we have to navigate, and it's new to us, and we're learning as we go. And by the end of it, we have a lot of stories to tell, and we can tell our future generations, this is how I navigated that storm.
So it is as David wrote, show me the wonders of your great love. Show me how to navigate this sea. Show me how to navigate this storm. That's what David is doing. He’s telling us how he navigated by writing these poems and having faith and hope, keeping his hope and keeping his faith throughout the whole thing. I hope we will all listen attentively to each other's stories. We feel a tug of the familiar after an anointing of these words, these stories.
David was human like we are. The human condition hasn't changed so we are all more alike than we think.
David’s asking God, show me the wonders of your great love. Come and save me from these people hunting me down. And I'm suggesting that we ask that of each other. To friends and family, show me the wonders of your great love. Tell me your story. How did you navigate this storm? Bestow upon me the lessons that you learned. Help me navigate. Save me. When we look at pieces of art, and when we listen to music, these are the wonders of great love.
These are the stories people are trying to tell us to communicate their humanity to us.
So art, music books, these are the maps, these navigational maps people have left behind for us. And the collection of Psalms is just one example of those maps that we still use today.
The people who lived with passion, they're showing us the wonders of their great love, their passion. That comes from creativity, what we create while we're here on this planet. It is like that question; did we live with passion? That was the line in the movie, Serendipity, the character John Cusack played, his best friend says, the Greeks never wrote obituaries but all they asked at the end of a life was, did they live with passion? So, I think David lived with passion. I'm trying to live with passion. By writing and sharing what I can while I'm here, and I hope you will do the same. I hope that whoever you choose to share your stories with, you are in the company of someone who listens with an open heart is attentive to you, and hears you with loving ears, because that's the best gift we can give each other. So, thank you for joining me today. Next week I’ll be reading Psalm 24, and I'll be doing a little lesson on Celtic spirituality for you to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Thank you again. God bless you.
