The latest project - 150 #psalmtweet from the #psalter in daily succession

You might have noticed that I am scheduling daily verses. Yes - software. I am about half-way through drafting the first 72 psalms. I hope to complete the draft in the next month, assuming I live so long. Last night I spent 6 hours in emergency with a sudden inexplicable explosive nosebleed. I am more fragile than I thought. Too much stress. But that's another story. Today I am swollen (an inflated balloon in half my soul) but still alive. 

My posts are unique. Words without music are dangerous. They create a false abstraction not to be believed. There is only one place in the world where the music can be generated from the Hebrew Unicode text verse by verse - that's on my computer. I line up the verse on my translation form and press the music button. Then I open the XML with Musescore - and presto a verse of music, isomorphic to the Scripture -- nothing added -- and more importantly, nothing taken away. So the computer has to last until the draft is completed.

Also there is only one place where the four quadrant Hebrew, English, SimHebrew, and automated parsing can be produced. The same computer - still going strong with a new solid-state drive (thanks to science). This table is produced ad hoc by an Oracle routine I wrote a year or two ago. It's not perfect, but it doesn't destroy information -- following the commandment in a few psalms: Do not destroy. I may make the odd comment too and point to the odd performance -- all on my blog already if you look for them.

It's not quite a religious thing with me to do daily study or daily verses. I have resisted this practice. 

But I have been meditating on science, culture, and faith for several weeks recently. I follow a number of things on Twitter, that app with the most lame rebranding I have ever noted. But it is still a source of confused, contradictory, and interesting tweets.

Religion is too often used to justify the status quo, to hearken back to a false narrative on the truth, and to support propaganda for war. The last is evident with the imperial Russian story and now also with the lunatic fringe of Pope Francis praising violence - how disappointing.  The middle -- hearkening back to earlier stages of ambiguity -- is a common refuge for a certain class of scholarship and also for the fearful, searching for certainty. And the first - justifying the status quo - is all too common in power structures. "It shall not be so with you." I think we have not learned this well.

The psalms tell the truth about the poet. Poetry -- admittedly with metaphor -- but how else do we speak of anything.

Science was to some also a search for certainty but in another direction. Certainty turned out to be a false narrative. Science, (fully supported by the honesty of the Scriptures and their invitation to question, is as uncertain as the religious framework). Faith is best termed faithfulness, i.e. rendering the adherent trustworthy. (Not 'faith' as if it were believing a lie.) With such exploratory faithfulness, science yields true delight in the intricacy of its patterns. The most religious experience I had as a teen was my fourth year class on special relativity. Learning time dilation was more revelatory to me of God's work than some of the learning of Scripture that I fell into fearfully shortly thereafter. Now I think that the uncertainty principle supports the doctrine of co-creation and theosis, but I don't want to give either the Anglicans or the Orthodox any reasons to boast. And I'm not about to explain my hunch.

Culture is yet another question. Science and religion both are part of it. The New Testament has the phrase - in the world but not of the world, and that phrase has had several busses drive through it and cause immeasurable damage. Damage is not what religion should be about. Doesn't God love the world, and the created order, and the cultures that develop as the people learn to govern and to care?

What if the Gospel, like a good sourdough, ate up the world, flour and milk cup by cup, and taught the world to care? It is like the yeast that works in the lump, leavening everything. And now that living and working culture, like its sourdough starter analogue, is trying to teach the churches what caring means because the churches in the rigid application of their own history, jurisprudence, and prejudice have forgotten what their purpose is. In the same way that the fifth book of Torah rewrites earlier laws and statutes for a later time, so the churches must research just how it has its tendencies to stray.

Lost sheep they are. Forgot their knowledge.

תָּעִ֗יתִי כְּשֶׂ֣ה אֹ֭בֵד בַּקֵּ֣שׁ עַבְדֶּ֑ךָ כִּ֥י מִ֝צְוֺתֶ֗יךָ לֹ֣א שָׁכָֽחְתִּי		176 Time and again I wander like a newborn lamb that is perishing. Seek your servant, for your commandments I do not forget.
qyv tyiti cwh aobd bqw ybdç ci mxvotiç la wckti	12 9	ty\iti c/wh abd bqw ybd\c ci m/xv\tic la wck\ti

All the music is available for every chapter of the Hebrew Bible in single PDFs, e.g. the psalms are here or combined PDFs. The combined are more recent. Feel free to use them native or as input to arrangements.

Checking in

We are still alive. I was away for two months or more. The old screen I used to use on my computer no longer worked, so I have a new monitor much to the delight of the grandchildren. "It's as big as a TV!".

We are working through the process of development, renovation, and greening of the home. Long process. May write the history some day when it is over, assuming we get to live in it. Not looking for an invasion or exile or anything.

We are of course distressed at the state of the world. I can imagine why it is so much worse than usual.

Dreamscape—Music and musing

 Diana and I were talking about what people want to do to make their lives have meaning. 

The bartender had said to me that he wanted to live out his old age with his wife. Wives and children of the staff on this vessel are all living separately from them. All of us, of course, are trapped within our necessity to find a living and support our families.

So I dreamt about making music politically. The dream started with a phone call in which the person I called was singing a psalm. And I was responding with the same music, an appeal for good sense and kindness.

Then I dreamt about the political impact of Psalm two. I have the music for Psalm 2. I would like to hear it and see it and have its questions debated politically. Why do the nations so furiously rage together?

I need performers and filmmakers who can take this concept and run with it. Is anyone interested? An immediate performance comes to mind: Lenny Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. It isn’t the music that I have, though I love that work. My music is directly derived from the Biblical text. I have the PDFs. I have the XML files. I can turn them into film, but I cannot perform them or debate them or make them politically effective.

Of course, I don’t expect to convince any power hungry oligarch with Hebrew music. But maybe I should.

Tragic news

We’re on holiday in Cambridge. Sarah and I were discussing Elaine Harvey nee Dreaver. So Sarah later looked up Beverly Elaine on Facebook and found that there had been a tragedy. Two adults found dead in their home. It seems that they are Beverly Elaine and Ed Harvey. Details have not been released. Here’s what I wrote shortly after meeting Beverly in 1998. 

98.10.16

"I'm on my way to a heavenly land." So Porgie sings as he sets out from Catfish Row to search for his beloved Bess.

The crippled Porgie represents the Ground of Being seeking his Love who has gone off with Sportin' Life. Ground of Being is the 'name' the German theologian Paul Tillich gives to God to prevent us from thinking that God is somehow just another thing in the universe. The lame Porgie is a fitting analog to God in that God's power is hobbled so that we might live as something other than puppets.

Now the drug dealer Sportin' Life is also created. And so is Bess's other grand and justified tempter, the murderer Crown. What do we have against Sportin' Life? Is God only a spoilsport? To put the question differently - why are there so many opportunities for life to turn against itself? Sportin' Life offers Bess magic dust to numb the pain of her experience. And given the trauma of Porgie being taken away by the authorities and Crown dying in the storm (if I remember correctly), it's not surprising that Bess finally goes to New York as Sportin' Life's mistress.

This story of seduction, and the availability of pragmatic comfort is as old as human life.

Well, I'm on my way to Edmonton. It doesn't have a Gershwin rhythm, and I'm not from Catfish Row. I never lived in Edmonton, but I once picked up a child there above a shopping centre, a ward of Alberta Social Services. They said he had a beautiful smile. There was an implication that he was somehow not perfect. But we knew better!

I vaguely remember first meeting him in a room. Others were watching through a one-way window. It was never in question (at the time) that he belonged with us. We knew in an instant. He, 13 months old, knew also.

We piled him into our car with his three older siblings (our other children) and the six of us drove back to Calgary where we were living at the time.

We did not know, but we had taken one who belonged elsewhere to belong with us. We did not know his mother, Elaine Beverly, nor his father Paul Jacob, nor any of his older half siblings - three on his father's side and an equal or greater number on his mother's including one or two daughters and sons Greg, Joel and Jonathon.

Jonathon lived in Victoria near us. We knew his parents before we knew the boys were brothers. We were all attending an adoptive support group for parents with children affected by alcohol in utero. Joel I will meet on this trip at Beverly's home in Fox Creek with her husband, Ed Harvey. Greg contacted me later. I still have an email for him.

We did not know that our Joey James, JJ, carried the famous name of the last of the hereditary chiefs of the Mistawasis tribe, Joseph James Dreaver, direct in line from the Scottish (Orkney Islands) Dreaver who married Mistawasis' daughter in the 19th century. We kept his names: James William Joseph MacDonald.

Within days he had taken his first steps. Within months he had lost his allergies to milk products. In that first year, his brothers Jeremy and Simon wanted to take him to school for show and tell. That's a story his mother Diana will have to tell.

For Diana, James was the shortest "confinement" on record. After 12 years of marriage, Diana and I had just returned from a "honeymoon" in England, our first trip overseas. Days after our return, we found we were going to have a new baby - 13 months old. There was some talk of having two, for we had heard that James had a sister (and our Sarah would have liked a sister, I'm sure). But sister/daughter was not in the mind of the Creator for us. And brother/son is just fine.

I remember turning into a driveway near the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer where James was soon to be baptized, three kids in the back of the car and mother announced that Social Services has a little boy for us. "Can we get him, Daddy?" comes a chorus of voices. Diana is suitably reserved knowing that the lion's share of the work will be hers. But the answer is yes from us all. Who turns down life?

One has to ask: why are there children whose parents love them but cannot bring them up?

There were other things we did not know, and it was not ours to ask at the time. Here we know only in part. The knowledge I speak of in this case could have been made more evident but we were rightly sheltered from it.

Beverly knows by her love what was right or wrong at the time for her. It was right to bear life, to share the groaning of all creation. It was sad for her not to be able to continue to care for this life, but it was right that we should help. Not a perfect right, not the best right, but an expedient and loving right nonetheless. "Love covers a multitude of sins."

James has a god-father, a pediatric pathologist, who grows apples. I am bringing some of them with me. They are very large. Dr. Geoff Machin knew immediately that James had the facial characteristics of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). He didn't tell us. We remained ignorant of this for 12 years. James had a happy childhood. He was a bit dreamy and could have ear infections, and was startled by bright or noisy movies, but we were blissfully ignorant that the teen-aged years would be immensely difficult. Geoff's diagnosis has been confirmed by Dr Cristine Locke. We have all, including James, learned a great deal about FAS in the last nine years.

Sportin' Life offered magic dust. Our culture offers alcohol among many of its drugs. Zero tolerance is the rule for an FAS victim.

But God is the God of the living and James is alive. (That life that has been, the meeting that has been, the brothers cannot be otherwise now and by mercy, they are and remain alive.) Pardon my theological interruptions but situations like this make explicit our need for help.

Our parish in Victoria, St John the Divine (Anglican), has prayed for "James and his family" for more than 7 years, since the troubles began. They have supported us as the meaning of James' wide ranging family became clearer. Now there are 9 half siblings, three of whom have met; two other adoptive families we know of and have spoken to, Bev and Ed Harvey and her sister Gwen, and the children and grandchildren of Paul Jacob still to be met. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of (Tennyson).

Alcohol is a big budget item. Like magic dust it makes many rich and many poor. Unlike magic dust, it is legally available and makes governments rich also. It can be useful in moderation but it is not necessary to life.

We arrived about 4:30 at Fox Creek. Home is immediately experienced. It is the first time that James has knocked on a door for a while. Mother Bev and husband Ed greet James with a big hug. They knew this knock was different. Bev calls Auntie Gwen to come over to meet her nephew. When Joel comes, he is immediately known. All greetings done, at a gap in the conversation, Bev asks: "Where was my knowledge of FAS when I was bearing children?" She does not stop short of asking the tough honest questions. Her strength of character is apparent. The support of her husband is quiet but clear.

We discuss the history of FAS knowledge from Plato, the Talmud, and the injunctions in the Bible on the confinement of Sampson's mother.

I'm back in Edmonton for a second time at the home of Joyce Bainsbridge who has kindly put me up on this momentous occasion. About 36 hours ago James was released from prison. He was appallingly dressed - ripped canvas shoes, thin cotton sweats, a filthy stained turtleneck and a jacket of sorts. He had been released at 8:30 AM, 1.5 hours earlier than I had been told, so he walked the streets on this brisk morning for the extra time. I meanwhile cruised around looking for the remand centre. I found a building at 96th and 104th which might have had the right address but it turned out to be police HQ. They gave me walking directions (across the parking lot) to the remand centre. I was cold so I ran. While I was approaching the stairs at a run, James appeared and shouted to me "Hey Pops - hang on" and ran himself to me with a warm embrace. We walked back to the car briskly as I began to size up his situation.

I didn't want to get to Fox Creek too early since I expected Bev and Ed would both be working (in fact they weren't) so we moseyed off to the West Edmonton Mall to do a Dickensian quick change for our own Oliver Twist. (We did OK for shopping though there were cheaper options but I didn't see them till later - and they were probably not as good quality.) 2 jeans, 3 underwear, 6 socks, 2 shirts, 1 jacket, 1 haircut, 1 meal, 1 shoes. His wardrobe at Fox Creek will not at least be an immediate embarrassment to him. I noticed that he had devoured two chocolate chip cookies from the flight so I finally figured out that he might be hungry. We ate a somewhat heavy breakfast at Albert's. (This morning's breakfast at Fox Creek was homemade by Bev - including bannock - a true delight.)

About 1:30 we headed to Fox Creek. I had hoped to entertain James with a tape of Porgie and Bess that I had brought & it was partly successful, but tape 2 switched over prematurely when we stopped for ice cream and we missed Bess Yo Is My Woman Now and the Ain't Necessarily So which I thought he would enjoy. We also missed Bess's powerful denial of Crown - but I think this kind of metaphor was a bit too much for the moment anyway. James liked the blues Gershwin chords and orchestration. [99.01.10 our best Christmas present later was a 1/2 hour of James playing guitar - he is very talented - I understand he inherited it from his father who is a Cree fiddler.]

We had no trouble finding the home of Ed and Bev. It is a trailer with an extension, 3 bedrooms, laundry, bath, kitchen, living room and entranceway. Fox Creek is a town of about 2500. The area is forested. Ed and Joel both work at the mill. Joel is also a pipe-fitter. Bev works at the hotel. We all hope that James will find work. There is no question that he belongs here. We talked almost nonstop and everyone had opportunities to talk alone as needed.

98.10.19

I talked briefly to Joel's adoptive father in Saskatchewan. He was very open with the difficulties they had experienced. As we all recognize, the hope we have for these children is sometimes dashed, but in this case, the family reunion has had a good beginning. None of us is giving up on their story.

2023.04.04 Cambridge

James returned to Victoria from Fox Creek and continued his life there with his friends on the street. His story continues with all its complexities. After many bouts with the law, he is now in the care of the John Howard society through the authority of the truth and reconciliation commission. Beverly visited us in Victoria. It was a good visit. We have been friends on Facebook for years. I was always encouraged by her posts.

What's up Doc

Here's a good read by Amy-Jill Levine. How well do we listen and how often do we impose shuttered vision onto what we read?

I am ready to be able to see again - in 3 weeks left eye - then see double for 2 weeks - then right eye. And today walking strong - beginning my recovery with 2 to 3 km a day walks - increase gradually.

look at me and I will smile
ere I walk off and there is no me
(Psalm 39:14)

Larry Behrendt has suggested to me that I take a new project seriously. I am not qualified to do this thing - but that never stopped me before. He writes "There is a strong need to thoroughly explore the relationship between Jesus' nonviolence and the Jewish attitude towards violence in Jesus' time and place. There is a similar need to integrate the effort to interpret the Gospels to show a nonviolent message, with an effort to read the Old Testament with similar generosity and purpose."

This relates directly to the question posed at the beginning of Fretheim's book on the Suffering of God -
"It is not enough to say one believes in God. What is important finally is the kind of God in whom one believes." (Page 1!)

What kind of God? God from God, Light from Light, Very God of Very God. The question jumps to mind as I noted at Larry's blog: "there is a good argument for non violence as the core character of God. Note particularly the summary of the character of YHWH in Psalm 146:6-9.

[doing judgment for the oppressed
giving bread to the hungry
יהוה releasing the prisoners

יהוה giving sight to the blind
יהוה uplifting the disturbed
יהוה loving the righteous

יהוה sheltering the guest
orphan and widow he restores
and the way of the wicked he subverts]

The imitation of YHWH - to be complete, holy as YHWH is complete, holy is a worthy calling - exactly the same I think as the call to obedience that is given to those who follow Jesus. One could write an essay on this beginning with Exodus 34:6 as it is elaborated in the Psalms: 25, 86, 103, 111, 112, 116, and 145. "

What kind of God? And God said ... let the earth bring forth (Genesis 1:24). This word for kind will be used in the Psalms here - Psalm 17:15.

Here we are as beasts emerging from the earth - our creation and our true birth is to be made in God's image - after God's likeness. And there we are in Psalm 17 satisfied to awaken lie God.

I in righteousness will gaze on your face
I will be satisfied to awaken in your similitude

I would add that this is a God who cares about image. Psalm 73:20.

like waking from a dream
My Lord, when you are roused
you will despise their semblance

And one whose emerging children walk about almost oblivious of the image they are called to. Psalm 39:7.

surely in a semblance a person walks
surely futility they murmur
they accumulate things
and don’t know who will get them next

These two psalms use the same word as image in Genesis 1:26. Likeness is used only once in the Psalms in a verse that no one reads, Psalm 58:5.

their heat is akin to the heat of a snake
as the deaf adder plugs its ear

This verse describes the violent human and shows, perhaps if you like, a picture of how distorted humans are - but this is what we see in our humanity, violence magnified rather than the image of the Holy and Complete that we are called to. (And the original garden could be misleading if you think it is all about regaining lost innocence - far from it.)

Well there are some thoughts on a project - how should I discipline the work?

Nice essay on Christos in Galatians - NTW

"Paul has given that single Abrahamic family a name: Christos."

This works well - finally a clear rebuttal of Christ as a second name for Jesus. Anointing, Messiah, and Christ are all the same word. Participation in Christ is key, critical, and provides identity that contains both suffering and glory. This is the work of God who in all creation is one who bears with and suffers the consequences of the behaviour of the created order of birthed children in this world we inhabit. (For God as suffering, see The Suffering of God by Terrence Fretheim, a book I should pay more attention to and report on.)

NT Wright's whole essay is here - worth the read. So also is AKM Adam's series on language, particularly the one I tweeted a bit about today. So let's not think we know automatically what Christ means - let's just be the glass of water, the visitor in sickness, the comfort that is needed wherever we can be present to another as God is present to us.

Maturing - is it possible?

What constitutes maturing of the human race? I really wonder if I can write this last essay of the series. So much is not about 'me' but about social maturing. Yet so much is wrong, and there are so many setbacks and returns to primal violence whether religious or personal that one despairs of anything in the way of the appearance of completeness in the human condition.

The surprise is that maturing is possible but the individual brings it about by what is not, and by what is indirect. The direct process is the obedience to a command. But what command? and what kind of obedience? Yesterday I thought I could express this. Today I find the words elude me.

I could come straight to the point: Jesus found the means to the end of completeness through his own self-giving. We can also find this but it is by no means obvious. Paul makes the point directly in his conditional phrase: if you by the Spirit do put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. How does one mortify deeds? And how did Jesus know this would work? He knew through the psalms - not for their violence, but for their recognition of the character of God as compassionate and not violent. (E.g. Psalm 86).

Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered - (Psalm 68) - indeed - but how? Is it just another local battle? Just another pile of spoils? Just another pile of bodies? No. The answer comes in the form of Psalm 69 - the waters are up to my neck, do not let me slip in the mud, do not leave me in the pit. The enemies that are destroyed are our own inner enemies. Sounds far-fetched, doesn't it? When the wolf is at the door, you kill the wolf, you do not give yourself to it.

I may not finish this task. I am writing on a borrowed hotspot, my wife's phone. My own perished this morning, an ear torn off by a renegade sword, a broken sim-card no longer able to find its network. My wife provided the healed ear and so I write. (See Larry's posts on the ear here). I am writing as I wait fasting for the third day to get into the operation I need to keep on living for a while... probably tonight...

Anyway - it is God who matures and he does it in response to faith - whatever that is. Read Psalms 1, 15, 26, 101, and so on to know the ways in which the human is invited to respond to the character of God. It is not with violence.

I will keep writing on this - if possible. It has a lot to do with what others write about in these difficult times. It begins with giving up the dominance, the me-first, and it begins and continues with care for those who are devastated by those of us who refuse the path of self-giving.

Here's Psalm 116 - I can't escape from the fact that I think it is in the Psalms that Jesus recognizes what must happen to overcome the sin of the world.

116 - now please

אָהַבְתִּי כִּי יִשְׁמַע יְהוָה אֶת קוֹלִי תַּחֲנוּנָי	1	I love for יְהוָה heard the voice of my supplication
כִּי הִטָּה אָזְנוֹ לִי וּבְיָמַי אֶקְרָא	2	for he bent his ear to me and in my days I will call
אֲפָפוּנִי חֶבְלֵי מָוֶת וּמְצָרֵי שְׁאוֹל מְצָאוּנִי צָרָה וְיָגוֹן אֶמְצָא	3	the pangs of death enveloped me and anguish of Sheol found me trouble and sadness I find
וּבְשֵׁם יְהוָה אֶקְרָא אָנָּה יְהוָה מַלְּטָה נַפְשִׁי	4	so in the name of יְהוָה I will call beseeching, יְהוָה, make an escape for my being
חַנּוּן יְהוָה וְצַדִּיק וֵאלֹהֵינוּ מְרַחֵם	5	Gracious is יְהוָה and righteous and our God is compassionate
שֹׁמֵר פְּתָאיִם יְהוָה דַּלֹּתִי וְלִי יְהוֹשִׁיעַ	6	יְהוָה keeps the simple I was brought low and me he saves
שׁוּבִי נַפְשִׁי לִמְנוּחָיְכִי כִּי יְהוָה גָּמַל עָלָיְכִי	7	Return O my being to your rest for יְהוָה has matured you
כִּי חִלַּצְתָּ נַפְשִׁי מִמָּוֶת אֶת עֵינִי מִן דִּמְעָה אֶת רַגְלִי מִדֶּחִי	8	for he rescued my being from death my eyes from tears my foot from tripping
אֶתְהַלֵּךְ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה בְּאַרְצוֹת הַחַיִּים	9	I will walk in the presence of יְהוָה in the lands of the living
הֶאֱמַנְתִּי כִּי אֲדַבֵּר אֲנִי עָנִיתִי מְאֹד	10	I believed so I spoke I myself was much afflicted
אֲנִי אָמַרְתִּי בְחָפְזִי כָּל הָאָדָם כֹּזֵב	11	I myself said in my haste every human lies
מָה אָשִׁיב לַיהוָה כָּל תַּגְמוּלוֹהִי עָלָי	12	what will I return to יְהוָה for all his benefits to me?
כּוֹס יְשׁוּעוֹת אֶשָּׂא וּבְשֵׁם יְהוָה אֶקְרָא	13	the cup of salvation I will bear so in the name of יְהוָה I will call
נְדָרַי לַיהוָה אֲשַׁלֵּם נֶגְדָה נָּא לְכָל עַמּוֹ	14	my vows to יְהוָה I will pay may it be before all his people
יָקָר בְּעֵינֵי יְהוָה הַמָּוְתָה לַחֲסִידָיו	15	Precious in the eyes of יְהוָה is the death of those under his mercy
אָנָּה יְהוָה כִּי אֲנִי עַבְדֶּךָ אֲנִי עַבְדְּךָ בֶּן אֲמָתֶךָ פִּתַּחְתָּ לְמוֹסֵרָי	16	יְהוָה beseeching, for I myself am your servant I myself your servant and child of your maidservant you have loosed my bonds
לְךָ אֶזְבַּח זֶבַח תּוֹדָה וּבְשֵׁם יְהוָה אֶקְרָא	17	to you I will offer the offering of thanksgiving so in the name of יְהוָה I will call
נְדָרַי לַיהוָה אֲשַׁלֵּם נֶגְדָה נָּא לְכָל עַמּוֹ	18	my vows to יְהוָה I will pay may it be before all his people
בְּחַצְרוֹת בֵּית יְהוָה בְּתוֹכֵכִי יְרוּשָׁלִָם הַלְלוּ יָהּ	19	in the courts of the house of יְהוָה in your centre O Jerusalem Hallelu Yah

Recognizing connections

Well, I did not succeed in presenting my third petal without a bunch of Biblical terms. That's because I wanted to couch the expression in historical categories - like those intuited by the human animal as words were invented for them: so perfection, completeness, holiness, purity - why am I not pure? holy? complete? or perfect? For I am definitely not. Note I do not concur with the phrase 'total depravity' or the like. I make no appeal to 'original sin' - rather I would suggest original responsibility and a true but limited depravity that is a result of misunderstanding what is good. It cannot be 'total' or there is no appeal to responsibility. God cannot be unknown or the human bootstrap program will fail.

Now to the fourth petal. Discerning the other. Do I dare listen to those who are different from me, even those who in some measure might be seen as beyond the pale?

I am not sufficient unto myself. I exist only in community. Nothing that I am is knowable except as it is related to others. This includes my language, my culture, my biases and my beliefs. Even the relationships that I am found in are only known in relationship to other groups that I am not in. There is no escaping relations.

Nothing that I can say can be said without the contextual assumptions that are within my culture. Yet if I stick only with such parochial views, I am still stuck in a failure to see that which is truly other than me, my group, my cultural assumptions and so on. Not, mind you, that I accept or condone some other aspects of the other, whether within my own group or outside of it.

Nonetheless, I am connected, whether I am in or whether I am out. Even my being out is defined by relationship.

I am also connections. I am an assembly of microbes, all of which are essential to my life: there are 100 trillion bacterial cells living on and within our bodies, 10 times the number of human cells that comprise ‘us’. How can I think of myself as if I were an individual? Can you imagine yourself as so dependent on microbes? A full-blown ecosystem, run by domesticated bacteria called mitochondria?

Why then should we love our neighbour as ourselves? Why should we love our enemy and do good to those who hate us? Who is this neighbour who along with us is ruining the very space we are together inhabiting? Who is this enemy who stands against all we hold dear? All that we value?

On the micro level, if our own members war within us, we get sick and die? On the macro scale, we labour to eliminate our enemies and control our environment for our own sakes.

Think of some examples.

Do I blame / do I relate to an industrial catastrophe? Like the pesticide spill in Bophal, India? It is not hard to imagine my inadvertent complicity in the industry that supports my own desire for a pest-free garden? But having learned of such things, do I approve - e.g. more recently, of the awful working conditions in sweat shops for clothing around the world? I visited such a sweat shop in the 1970s in Toronto! I could see right away that there was no trust between worker and management - only dependency and exploitation.

The problems were not far away and I was in the middle of them. In those days, the exploited were refugees from Czechoslovakia.

What about kleptocrats and Russian gangsters today?  I do not approve of course, but I question whether economic factors alone can fix such a situation as we find in Ukraine today. They will change it, but not fix it. How does a bad relationship get fixed? And of course this one is beyond my immediate power or influence.

Here are some less bad examples - even good ones: Johnson Thomaskutty is an Indian preacher who is part of this conference in Pakistan,

The 2014 Church of God [its international headquarters in Anderson, Indiana, USA] Convention held at The Church of God Mission Compound, Lalmanirhat, Bangladesh, was a rich experience for the organizers and the participants alike. The convention was inaugurated by The Honorable District Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Habibur Rahman. A Muslim by birth and practice, the District Deputy Commissioner keeps a solemn relationship with the Church of God Missions in Bangladesh. The festival was convened from 24 to 26 April 2014. There were about 700 delegates (including children), mostly from sixty-eight rural Bangladeshi churches, gathered during this great event. The meetings were blessed by the presence of youths and office staff from Dhaka (Senpara), Lalmanirhat, Kaunia, and Kakina. The general theme of the conference was “Let Your Light Shine!” based on Matthew 5:16.  

This conference focused on "Love Your God, Love Your Church, Love to Give, and Love Your Family". There are several groups in this example, circles within circles, places to learn love. Love, of course, the ultimate connector, cannot be used to promote disaster. Ultimately it will call greed to account, even if it takes a lot of time.

Or consider the space between. I will do my own translation of this phrase: Deuteronomy 1:16
שָׁמֹ֤עַ בֵּין־אֲחֵיכֶם֙
וּשְׁפַטְתֶ֣ם צֶ֔דֶק בֵּין־אִ֥ישׁ וּבֵין־אָחִ֖יו
וּבֵ֥ין גֵּרוֹ
Hear between your kin
and judge rightly between anyone and your kin
and between anyone and the other among you.

You may begin with family, but must not neglect responsibility for right judgment with anyone including the foreigner (guest, sojourner) which I have rendered 'the other'. The white fire is as critical as the black fire. We never learned this easily. I recall the bullies I sensed when I was 50 years younger. Avoidance was my technique, not resolution. And the abuser? There was no escape for a child. And I might add, there was no good advice either and a lot of poor training in strength. The word 'sinner' was not applied to the ones who held the reins of power.

One could multiply examples, but it is not for our own understanding or abstraction. What is first of all important is how we act or not with the situations we find ourselves in. How do we learn to respond in love to what may be hateful to us, to inferred motivations, that we might learn to see responsibility in others, and our interconnectedness?

With David, however, I will not allow myself to take responsibility for actions that are not my doing. See Psalm 7:5-6. But I will admit my fault when it is required. Consider Psalm 6.

Why does consideration of 'the other' ultimately lead me back to responsibility for the brokenness of relationship that I see in the world? I am clearly not coming up with a simple answer to my questions. Perhaps the fifth and final in this series, maturing, will help. Perhaps the clue will be both in a corporate and an individual maturing, a coming to the fullness of humanity that we are called to.

Working towards completeness

At last, the third thought-petal of my five which I first listed here with elaborations here, here and here. But this is more than a petal. It is the stamen itself.

Completeness indicates the end of the story. Completeness is another synonym for the whole. The word for complete in Hebrew has the three-letter root taf-mem-mem תמם. And it appears at the end of the movie, thus: תם, tam, meaning 'THE END'.

This word is used quite frequently in the Psalms. As in English, it can mean ended as in finished, wiped out. And it can mean completed in the sense of filled full. So it belongs in the domain of finishing, consuming, and satisfaction. Some of these words overlap with the semantic domain of destruction. In my very terse analysis of the Psalms by semantic domain here, I list this word as one of 11 under the idea of wholeness. The full list is long winded and full of fuzzy decisions.

אחד	once, one, single
גמל	grow, benefit, mature, pay back, nursing child, reward
חסד	loving-kindness, covenant mercy, mercy, reproof, show kind, and חסִִיד
	these I treated as separate roots though they are really the same. I gloss them as loving-kindness or some variation on kind or mercy. The noun is merciful one, or in the plural, those under mercy, and also stork. Traditional glosses for the plural include saints, or holy ones, and for the singular, godly, all a bit misleading in my opinion.
יחד	together, altogether, one, unique, solitary
כל	all, every
כלל	כלל, glossed as perfection, occurs only once in the Psalms, in Psalm 50. from Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shined. It is a strange verse for today, when perfection is not exactly what we could associate with trouble in the land.
צמד	couple, see Psalm 106:28 for example.
רפא	heal, also its homonym, used as shades in Psalm 88.
שׁלם	שׁלם is perhaps the most obvious of the group, glossed as peace, make whole, but also pay and payback. It is part of the name Salem and Absalom.
תמם	complete, and once as filled full. Psalm 73

How in a moment they are desolated
floundering, filled full from frights.

According to that psalm, this is the sudden 'end' תם of the wicked.

What constitutes my end - is it complete or not? Is such completion desirable? Can I know it before the end? Do I know in advance what is complete for me? or for others? or with others? The word perfect is often the gloss used for תם. So God says to Abram (before his name change to Abraham), Walk before me and be complete. Or as in the King James Version, be perfect. It is Yahweh, appearing to Abram as the mysterious El Shaddai, saying

Walk in my presence and be complete. אֲנִי־אֵל שַׁדַּי הִתְהַלֵּךְ לְפָנַי וֶהְיֵה תָמִֽים׃

These are hard questions, and do not admit of an easy theoretical answer. The answer comes through error, struggle, and destruction of barriers to the wholeness that is sought. Perhaps that is why Jerusalem is such an image of conflict in its whole history. The place of peace cannot find its achievement. The Holy is elusive.

The question then is focused: by what means did Abram find this walk? And how shall we? Let's leave the question there for the moment. Perhaps by the time we get to the fifth petal, the form of the stamen will be more in evidence.

Hint: death is proleptic.

Ponder the mystery in that inimitable poem by T. S. Eliot. A proleptic Death is equally available in the faith of Abram as it is in the faith of Abraham or of the NT through the circumcision of the Anointed.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down 

This set down 

This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? 

There was a Birth, certainly 

We had evidence and no doubt. 

I had seen birth and death, 

But had thought they were different; this Birth was 

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. 

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, 

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, 

With an alien people clutching their gods. 

I should be glad of another death.

Error

My second thought-petal when I was musing on what I value as "good for you" was acknowledging error.

Good for you is, by the way, the name of a bulk food store nearby, about 7 km away. We often go there for bread flour, oats, wheat germ, and other bulk foods.

So how can one classify error? (And I note to my relief that I included the verb acknowledging.)

First, of error, there is accident, mistake, things arising from ignorance, from complexity, from various kinds of action, things having unexpected consequences, things that happen where the mechanics are broken, such as in the case of disease or other damage to a human being.  It's not an easy list!  Some of these errors are easy to correct, and some cannot be fixed. And they are not necessarily anyone's fault.

And then there's 'sin'. What is it that we call 'sin'? It is always communal, always against another. While it may be committed by the individual, there is no escaping from its origin or its impact even if one considers oneself without it. And by definition, no one is without sin. You may have a necessary belief that someone is without sin, but if anyone is short of it, he can have some of mine. So in a sense, I refuse to go to the answer before I have the questions. I will undermine a theoretical faith because theory may prevent us from actually behaving in a manner suitable to our calling in faithfulness.

It was Northrope Frye who taught me through his book The Great Code, about the problem of having answers to questions. Answers consolidate the learning at the level of the question, and prevent the development of further questions. This (one among many other causes) produces stunted growth. The doctrine of 'original sin' is an example of theory that prevents growth. We can take no consolation from such doctrine if we do not find the reality of obedience. That is the real question. And it is not quite the subject of this second thought-petal.

So, secondly, how easy is it to acknowledge error? I think you know that it doesn't even matter which kind of error we are talking about. It is hard. Honour and shame can prevent us from even considering a typo. You didn't sin. You just had a fingering problem on the keyboard, but you didn't notice until it was published!

I found one in a delightful book the other day. The book is Aleph through the Looking Glass, Yale 2006, by Jonathan Orr-Stav. It is by far the best introduction to Hebrew letters I have come across. Late in the book, an inconsequential image omits the letter resh. Resh, he describes, is a fundamental stroke in the Hebrew script. The omission of resh in the image (twice) is curious but unimportant in the overall scheme of things. It may have happened for a variety of systemic reasons, many of them outside the author's control. In a book this many years following initial production, it may even be a recurrence of an error that had been fixed already.

Books like systems are a complex process. Many people must cooperate to produce such things. And in many senses they are never finished. This should put a limit to the perfection we seek and allow us to stand away from the products we build. To stand too close is to expose our need for perfection in a way that reveals deeper troubles.

There will always be misprints. Some of them we correct as we read and we never even notice. Such self-correcting processes are an essential component to life and our ability to operate in any fashion. Life would be boring without them. (What! O happy fault!)

If acknowledging a simple error is difficult, how much harder is it to face a situation where we damage others either by accident or by design, or as a byproduct of our own pursuit of self-interest? This fear of shame, correction, or inability to change is the cause of endless governance problems in our world. In fact, the line between systemic error and sin is not at all clear. Murder happens sometimes as a result of mental illness and this in turn is caused by systemic problems in either or both gestation or social structures.

So my second thought-petal reveals a serious set of concerns. Whether it be power to build, or desire to protect, or all the myriad of conflicts that emerge from our lives, how will we deal with the power and the desire within us when we ourselves have been produced by that prior generation that we are so happy to blame? First we must acknowledge that there is a fault-line.

Perfection in the limited sense of "working towards completeness" and with a byproduct of purity and holiness is our next thought-petal.

Till by turning, turning, we come round right

So goes the old Shaker song, 'tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be .... But maybe you didn't think that turning in this song meant repentance.

What do I mean by turning, my first petal. To turn is to change, to turn from something, to turn to something else. The turn may be very slight, as for instance, seeing faith as faithfulness, an action and an attitude rather than a belief, a concrete conversation rather than an abstract belief.  Maybe turning is impossible - maybe one needs a dance partner to help.

But repent?  That word is loaded. Yet its simplest meaning is to turn towards God - to face God, to know presence. Turn, face, presence are all themes Psalm 90. In verse 3, the poet writes of God:

you turn a mortal to contrition and you say, Turn children of humanity

In verses 8 and 9, iniquity - ours - the corporate failure, is spoken of - and we face away from the face of God:

you put our iniquities before you our dissembling in the light of your face

for all our days face away from your fury we consume our years as a mutter

In verse 13, the poet appeals

Turn יהוה, until when? And be comforted over your servants.

Of course that psalm should be read in its context, as the beginning of Book 4 and the focus on Moses after the failures recorded in Books 2 and 3.

Turn - repent - is the first command of Jesus in his ministry according to Mark 1:15. This call always bothered me. As if one could be called to good news by the word 'repent'. Repent always meant bad news. It concentrates on the things we have done wrong. It has nothing to do with good news so why should I pay attention.

O poison! How loaded words get twisted and distorted. Repent turned these gospel words for me into something worth running away from. Why! Who would not want to be face to face with the One who created us, the One who loves us, the One who suffers with us and longs for us to be present, facing, fully alive, in the created and redeemed world which is so beloved? Yes - there is work to turn away from destructive behaviour, but there is joy first to turn toward love.  If love is what you are expecting, of course.

But maybe we are expecting condemnation, judgment, criticism, (and maybe we deserve it). But who knows what one deserves or not. Can we believe there is good news? (Without making it up). If one stops the things that are destroying one's life, it is possible that healing and growth might be the result. Who knows? And who has the power to stop destructive things?

Anyway - turn is my first word. As the soil is turned to prepare for a planting, so we are turned to prepare for the impregnating word that will enter into our own humus.

Simple? Yet maybe not so simple.

What's poison?

I raised a possibly disturbing question in my post on "good for you". Surely there's not poison in the Bible! Well, think about it. Even the best fertilizer will burn a young plant. And the wrong fertilizer will lead to lots of green growth but no fruit. So are these poison? Yes - truth improperly applied is falsehood.

But you can hold on to prejudice concerning perfection for the time being.

A few things I thought of while contemplating Psalm 2 and a book on the Suffering of God by Terrence Fretheim (Fortress Press 1984): Psalm 2 presents God and the human ruling jointly. One poison that can be taken from it is fear, specifically the fear that the rule of God is a domination structure, an unconditional set of orders. What kind of God is the God who is worthy of worship? How does God rule? True enough there is ridicule and derision in Psalm 2 but there is also a hint of humour, and an invitation to responsibility. The kindling with a touch of wrath is the gift of a sensitive conscience, to speak in human terms. There is refuge also and a completion of the opening command of Psalm 1 to be happy.

So hold on to prejudice but bear in mind it may need tweaking to allow some of this light to get in through the cracks. Bear also in mind that our prejudice may be a defense mechanism, designed to prevent light from entering into us because of a deep-seated dread that one prefers not to face.  To paraphrase those last few commands (invitations) of Psalm 2, fear a little in your service - tremble with joy, and kiss with purity - more on this later as we move into turning, the first of my five petals.

What's "good for you" in Christian teaching?

Alright, you theologians and atheists out there, here's finally something you can tear apart. First maybe I will begin with a list. And why pick 'Christian teaching'?  Is it different from Hebrew teaching or Greek teaching or Muslim teaching or human teaching?  There will be considerable overlaps - but also a few radical differences. In Christian thinking particularly, we have one unique component - the death of the anointed, the death of the beloved, the death of the chosen one, Jesus' death, our death.  This component is not available explicitly to any other teaching system - but it is always available everywhere implicitly.

Obviously this is a big topic. My list is this. These things are good for you.

1. turning
2. acknowledging error
3. working towards completeness
4. recognizing connections
5. maturing

Look at that - no square script, no Greek, no Bible quotations, no God, no music even! If I were going to associate these 5 with Biblical words, they might be (though not limited to)

1. repentance
2. confession of sin
3. striving for holiness
4. seeing the body of the assembly (congregation, church)
5. coming to the fullness of our humanity

Again, not a lot of text - I wonder if this spontaneous 5 fold list will hold up. The difference between 3 and 5 is the cooperative action of the human and the Holy One. There, I have made a first mention of God.

How then should we live? What are say, five things that we should avoid? Like growing plants, there is poison, imbalance, and there is fertilizer that enables and soil that encourages.

The list of poisons begins with

1. revenge. And continues with 
2. hatred,
3. greed, 
4. exploitation, 
5. self-protection, 

and the violence that these things cause. What can we do in a world with apparently limited resources to deal with the natural presence and growth of these things in our lives?

The fertilizer is the word of God in theological terms - but what does this mean in non-Biblical words?

1. Mutual respect, especially for elders, 
2. healthy skepticism. Ultimately this will turn to the single word of
3. loving the other, 
4. loving the enemy
5. loving oneself in a new way. 

This teaching, as you might guess, is fully available in the ancient poetry of the Psalms, but it requires some unpacking so that the poisons packaged in the same poetry do not get the better of sound judgment. Now for a quote to end this beginning (Psalm 2:10-12):

So now you sovereigns, let there be insight
be warned you who judge on earth
serve Yahweh in fear
and rejoice in trembling
Kiss, each of you - pure lest he be angry
and you perish in the way
for he kindles as a hint of his anger
Happy! all who take refuge in him

I hear cries of unfair! How can you begin Christian teaching with a word from the Old Testament? The question and the cry reveal just how wrong most Christian thinking and teaching is. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong in that there is always an attempt from the most junior to the most senior of teachers to wrap up the teaching and hit hard with it as if it were to be used as a cudgel for revenge on all those horrible people out there that are 'not me'.

You might ask - how can we grow in the presence of such poison?

One thought - hold your fire. All texts have their own packaging. Don't eat the package without unwrapping it. Yet eat the whole package. Even some foods are poison with the antidote included. Compare fruit juice with the whole fruit. The juice alone will be too high in sugar for the health of your body. The whole fruit will give you the necessary fibre so that your body can slough off the poisonous sugar.

Question that you may be wrong. I include myself in the collective 'you'. I will use the Scripture, and in so doing, I may simply reinforce traditional stereotypes. Let's hold our feet to the fire. Let's find out if the wheat and the darnel (poison) in the words of Scripture can be separated in us for the ultimate judgment in the here and now.

There - this essay is in preparation for next week's lessons on the parable of the wheat and the tares, Matthew 13:24 ff. Notice how in every case we have looked at so far Jesus' parables in the Gospel are surrounding textual references to the 'old' Testament (Matthew 13:52). And these are not read because these words are omitted in the lectionary reading, This is not good for you if you only hear the words that are read on Sunday.

Do you have to be a philosopher to live?

Just for fun I decided to finish Ecclesiastes 12 in the music. It's online in the usual place. It supported my laziness from my youth. There were several questions I did not want to address - so that many books could be written and much learning be a weariness of the flesh suited me just fine. Eventually though I did do some homework.

But being a programmer - you know that laziness is my first name. I would rather work for days to find a repeatable solution than actually solve a problem by brute force. I think it takes real faith to read the Bible closely - because your lifetime is not long enough to finish it. And it's only a small library - somewhere around 66 books depending on how many you include and how you count them.

Anyway - Ecclesiastes is fun. My earlier posts on it get thousands of hits - why? I think it's all the funky transcriptions I included, confuses the search engines.

It's good to read an awkward translation, even a bad one - it makes you think.

Discipline, persistence, love for the other, repentance

Away for 7 days and 300 posts accumulate in my reader. I don't read these on my mobile and I deliberately did not take a computer to NYC. But some of them were good - and some of the good ones I won't catch up on - unless you tell me to. Here are a few that intrigued me -

1. Larry Hurtado teaches on Early high Christology. The comment sections are really interesting in that they come from Christian readers who are just learning to read. See the linked post and the two prior ones. 
2. Rachel Held Evans intends to blog on the Common Lectionary. Now why didn't I think of this! I think I may try and do something. That would get me out of the Psalms for a bit.
3. Larry Behrendt at Jewish Christian Intersections has some good thoughts on the NT as usual. My comment there is reflected in the title of this post. He asks what is a good Jew? The question has many good comments. Diana and I had done the Jewish-Christian intersection by attending both Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue and St Thomas' a few blocks away. (Sarah came with us to the temple where one of her colleagues was playing.) The teaching from Torah on Friday surpassed the rather weak sermon at Evensong on Sunday (Sarah was on her way back to the UK by this time). Christians are not well trained in reading the Old Testament.
4. Oh and I mustn't forget Christopher Page - I responded to him this morning, hopefully not making myself too obnoxious.

There's a cop-out. I report on just over 1% of the posts I missed. If you posted and I missed it (May 5 to 13), let me know. 

Free adaptation, translation without word boundaries

I find some dynamic equivalence neither dynamic nor equivalent, but I was just imagining how one might drive through a psalm with an earth mover.  Here's  Psalm 16 (I will never get out of Book 1).

Alright, you want me to write, to gold-plate your love. Consider me Beloved.
Preserve me? Really? Refuge in you? I said so.
You said in fact to the One who cannot be named - "You are my governor.
I have nothing that is good outside of you."

All those famous, revered - thieves and robbers!, Dead Rulers of all stripes.
I have zero delight in them.

The world follows them with adulation, rushing headlong into oblivion.
You won't find me drinking to them, or even naming them.

You, Unnameable, my share - you know how I drink to you,
You are even my cup.
You will keep track of me.

You promise, and the pleasure is your pledge, binding on you,
for me, even me, an inheritance beyond imagining.

I will say so to whomever asks - I will repeat your advice,
indeed I will come as close as I can, without misleading,
to your chastening hand on my vital center.

So, the One who is remembered by that Name and I
have a bargain, continual, face to face,
governance unmediated - so I am unmovable,
my heart glad, my glory rejoicing, my flesh living in trust.

You will not throw me off into shadowy places with Dead Rulers.
You will not allow anyone within your love and mercy to see destruction.
You will show me the path of life,
satisfaction, gladness, your continuing presence,
pleasures in your governance always.

Glory to the One who creates, the Same who redeems, and the Holy
who was, who is, and who continues, with us eternally, Amen.

And here's my rigid rendering.

מִכְתָּם לְדָוִד שָׁמְרֵנִי אֵל כִּי חָסִיתִי בָךְ	1	From gold, concerning atonement, through inscription, of David. Keep me O God for I take refuge in you.
אָמַרְתְּ לַיהוָה אֲדֹנָי אָתָּה טוֹבָתִי בַּל עָלֶיךָ	2	(You said to יהוה You are my Lord) My good pales beside you
לִקְדוֹשִׁים אֲשֶׁר בָּאָרֶץ הֵמָּה וְאַדִּירֵי כָּל חֶפְצִי בָם	3	About the holy ones that are in the earth of them and of majesties ... Is all my delight in them?
יִרְבּוּ עַצְּבוֹתָם אַחֵר מָהָרוּ בַּל אַסִּיךְ נִסְכֵּיהֶם מִדָּם וּבַל אֶשָּׂא אֶת שְׁמוֹתָם עַל שְׂפָתָי	4	Let their idols increase following they rush headlong I will not spill out their libations with blood neither will I bear their names on my lips
יְהוָה מְנָת חֶלְקִי וְכוֹסִי אַתָּה תּוֹמִיךְ גּוֹרָלִי	5	יהוה is the portion of my share and my cup You yourself maintain my lot
חֲבָלִים נָפְלוּ לִי בַּנְּעִמִים אַף נַחֲלָת שָׁפְרָה עָלָי	6	Pledges have fallen to me in pleasures Indeed for me there is a glistening inheritance
אֲבָרֵךְ אֶת יְהוָה אֲשֶׁר יְעָצָנִי אַף לֵילוֹת יִסְּרוּנִי כִלְיוֹתָי	7	I will bless יהוה who advises me Indeed in the nights my vital centre chastens me
שִׁוִּיתִי יְהוָה לְנֶגְדִּי תָמִיד כִּי מִימִינִי בַּל אֶמּוֹט	8	I have agreed with יהוה in front of me continually for he is at my right hand so I will not be moved
לָכֵן שָׂמַח לִבִּי וַיָּגֶל כְּבוֹדִי אַף בְּשָׂרִי יִשְׁכֹּן לָבֶטַח	9	So my heart will be glad and my glory rejoice Indeed my flesh will dwell in trust
כִּי לֹא תַעֲזֹב נַפְשִׁי לִשְׁאוֹל לֹא תִתֵּן חֲסִידְךָ לִרְאוֹת שָׁחַת	10	for you will not forsake me to the grave You will not permit one within your mercy to see destruction
תּוֹדִיעֵנִי אֹרַח חַיִּים שֹׂבַע שְׂמָחוֹת אֶת פָּנֶיךָ נְעִמוֹת בִּימִינְךָ נֶצַח	11	You will make known to me a path of life satisfaction of gladness in your presence pleasures at your right hand always