1/18/2017
Back in the 1960s I wrote my
Minister Provincial, Fr. Dominic Limacher, for permission to cut down on some
of the breviary psalms that we were obliged to say. My main reason was that I
could not get comfortable with all the talk about “enemies” in the psalms. I
suppose I could have followed Thomas Jefferson’s strategy and simply cut out of
the bible the passages that I thought were not good any more for modern times.
Now that I am praying and reading
the psalms with more experience, I am re-evaluating my earlier attitude. Maybe
our problem is that we modern people have gotten too used to solving our
problems by segregating ourselves from people who give us problems. The
psalmists did not have that luxury. They had to stay and deal with their
enemies right where they were.
Ever since the dawn of the
industrial revolution, people have been experiencing more abundance than they
used to have. The abundance was made possible by technological inventions. For
example, gunpowder and guns let Europeans have powerful enough weapons to
overwhelm peoples who did not have such weapons, which made colonialism and
slavery possible, and in our country, made it possible for Europeans to drive
the natives off the land so they could “go west.”
We learned how to deal with interpersonal
conflicts: move away from them.
The same process has operated on a
smaller scale within our families. We used to have to share radios and TVs in
the house; now everybody has his or her own TV. And of course, it has now
reached the point where we each have our own TV right in our pockets, and can
screen out other people 24/7.
Our tendency to want to move away
from problems is the source of the physical segregation that keeps racism alive
among us. It allows us to live in media “silos,” where each of us consumes only
the media that reinforce our own comfort. Then, when things do not go our way,
we have no solution except to lash out.
At least the psalmist prayed
instead of lashing out.
I need to accept the discipline of
staying involved with people even when the involvement makes me uncomfortable.
Not only that, but if vulnerability is part of living, I want to stay
respectfully involved with people even when they actively hurt me.
We look down on African cultures
which assume that enemies can hurt you through witchraft and sorcery. We can’t
get hurt that way--we move away. But we run out of room to move, both
physically and psychologically. We are going to have to learn to face down our
problems right where we are. We have “enemies,” people who are out to frustrate
our plans, all around us. If we are to love such enemies, we will have to be
involved with them--respectfully, vulnerably, and faithfully. We will be able
to pray the psalms with more empathy.
