Reveal requires a subject - and a target - and a substance. Since each subject and each target if they are human are of manifold variety and each aspect that might be 'revealed' is of interest to some or not, then a single word 'revealed' does not in the headline reveal much.
I reveal nothing. You may read my translations and something may be suggested to you concerning form, or joy, or gift, or content. But it is not I who reveal but some aspect of the word that is given in revelation to you by whatever agent. If I explain some thing about a psalm, this may help your revelation, but my explanation is only a nudge, a wink, not the revelation itself.
The unveiling is in you. Perhaps I planted or watered, but I did not reveal. It is beyond me to open eyes or to unstop ears or to engage the whole that you are, Beloved.
Why do I write then? Perhaps I reveal a little of myself to myself. Perhaps I learn. In my visible struggle, perhaps some other such as yourself sees a motion towards hope. There are times when much seems revealed to me, but I may not be able to write on it. Intellect distracts, or explanation distorts, or volume diminishes capacity. If I find focus, then distractions are put aside, explanation is guided and limited, volume is attenuated, and relevance amplified. But such discipline takes considerable time. That is why I have limited my posts on the psalms - the 'notes' on PoC to 10 a month. 12 months to go then. And all that time, my concordant and structural summaries here will be under refinement.
I do hope someone is reading because it is a lot of fun. But beware - I miss things I should not miss. Hopefully I will catch many of them in the next year. Hopefully my misses will not mislead you. But there is and will not be any final answer apart from that sufficiency which is not mine to give.
The revelation continues and grows for ever. It is revealing the goodness of the one who said repeatedly: it is good. There are no hidden codices, it is not cryptic, there is no fraudulence, there is real engagement with this presence. Such unveiling satisfies. That is why the people came - because they ate and were satisfied. Psalm 22:26 (27). Compare John 6:26.
יֹאכְלוּ עֲנָוִים וְיִשְׂבָּעוּ
Hmm, if revelation is social, then blogs are less vehicles of revelation than they used to be, sadly, since there is less commenting and sharing as time passes... ah, remember the good old days ;)
ReplyDeletePersonally I try (when pressure of work and living in two places allows) to comment still, and I've noticed a few other old-timers do, and several new voices... so maybe the sociability is changing rather than dying?
Learning and teaching are social. Revelation is more mysterious, I think, but the ground for it is in our social interaction with each other and with all things. I was thinking of Jesus' comment to Peter re the answer to the question - who do you think I am? And he said - so human revealed this to you, but my Father...
ReplyDeleteAnd about this post I didn't say, but the thought was stimulated by John's recent "Psalm 6 Revealed" headline. I thought it was a difficult and technical revelation that he wrote.
I didn't 'get' psalm 6 that way i.e. technically, or by illness, as is sometimes given as the 'distant' reason. That psalm was one that needed no processing - it was a sudden present not distant experience of unexpected guilt that drove me when I first read psalm 6 closely. Such power there is in the human psychological frame, that I took the experience as direct rebuke from the Most High and it has never left my understanding of that Psalm as I have sometimes hinted here. That is revelation - and that is I think what the poet experienced and why he wrote the psalm. Whether psalm 38 is from the same hand I do not know - but it is the same thought and is entitled 'to remember'. So for me this is part of the memory theme in the psalms - encompassing psalm 70 and 137. (15 psalms use זכר as a keyword by my current counts - probably right since this is a strong root.)
And even these old days of being corrected by Revelation are in the 'good old days'. (ki-tov) They are quite - well - almost comical. I see the date of the post is Oct 26, 2006. I wrote there: these poems are dangerous!
That's what I mean by revelation.