lent || inbetween
I wrote a song a while back about this idea of being between things. Abraham Heschel talks about living between two historic poles: Sinai and the kingdom of God. A pastor friend was writing on displacement and being ‘midway’ through something. And so, this idea of inbetween has been in some ways haunting. It is a restless place. But what has me perplexed, yet a bit relieved, is the thought that this is normal. Just as normal as it gets. Now I know that the speculator will ask, “Well what is normal?” And I really don’t know or care today. Normal is what is it is, the awareness of the common.
And so of course Psalm 1 begins with a highly ordered way of looking at the world. There is the faithful and the wicked and you get to choose which way to live. The end of the psalter is a doxology that simply praises God over and over till the collection is concluded. It moves, as Brueggemann puts it, from obedience to praise. It seems all so logical, right? You follow a certain way and you get certain results, it is quite American-capitalist minded, even mathematical. The problem is the 148 psalms between the first and the last question this idea to no end. They protest, they lament, they limp and proclaim the world as it is, all mixed up and frustrated. Life happens inbetween… inbetween the darkness… the tear drops and those days marked by redemption’s sweet voice.
