Values as represented in the Psalms
Let’s return to the values represented in the Psalms. We want to find our way toward an overwhelming respect for what religion—Judeo-Christian religion—is and has been so that we can voice certain questions, certain alerts raised by Gurdjieff and the Gurdjieff teaching.
Protection
Another value in the Psalms, so very important to the stability of our lives, is protection. Psalms 23 is a psalm of faith in the protection offered us by the Lord God.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
I will not quote the entire Psalm; we all know it.
Knowing our frailty and mortality
Another point in Psalms—and in many aspects of religion, could one but capture it—is knowing our frailty and mortality. From Psalm 39:
Lord, make me to know my end,
and the measure of my days, what it is.
That I may know how frail I am.
Behold thou hast made my days as a hand breadth,
and my age is as nothing before thee.
Truly every man at his best state is altogether vanity.
. . .
My hope is in thee.
That recognition of mortality is accompanied by a statement that passes across the vast distance between the humble “I” and the highest listener, to say that my hope is in thee.
A code of conduct
There is a code of conduct in the Psalms. I’m thinking, for example, of Psalm 24:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
Who shall stand in His holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart,
who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.
And then in Psalm 115, a verse that deals directly, memorably, with self-love, with vanity:
Not unto us, O Lord, not onto us, but unto thy name give glory.
The need to know my shortcomings – and to learn
Another value is the possibility, the need, to know my shortcomings and to somehow learn. It's a very deep learning. Neither to assail myself nor to hail myself, but to live from within, learning over a lifetime, knowing each thing for what it is. That value is in the Psalms.
Psalms 25:
Show me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. . .
For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my inequity, for it is great.
Psalms 73:
So foolish was I, and ignorant.
I was as a beast before thee.
Nevertheless, I am continually with thee.
A language for suffering
One more point out of Psalms: they teach us a language for suffering. They create a powerful companionship because the Psalmist is a sufferer. The psalmist is always contending with adversaries—some of whom are so mighty that there is nothing but fear and trembling, and with requests that the Lord act because the psalmist cannot. But the Psalms have taught us a language of suffering. And when we do suffer—particularly at great passages in life, losses, death, and illness—we have this language, 2500 years old. It teaches us how to speak, how to reflect, how to grieve, and becomes a companion to our suffering.
Remember Psalm 22, the Psalm that Jesus pronounced from the cross.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
What we often forget is that there is more to that Psalm:
I am a worm and no man.
A reproach of men and despised of the peoples.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn.
And here, as the Psalm continues, there is no more psychedelic poet than the Psalmist:
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my bowels.
My strength is dried up like a potsherd, but be not far from me, O Lord.
We have been taught by Judeo-Christian tradition to suffer and to share, through language and feeling, our suffering.
Firm commitment and remembering
There are values I would call firm commitment and remembering. When the Israelites were exiled from their homeland and sent to Babylon, one of the very great psalms emerged, a psalm of remembering, of commitment (Psalm 137).
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
. . .
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee,
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Stunning. It sets an example of firm remembering, of commitment: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem ... if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy."
What is our Jerusalem? That question leads on to the Gurdjieff teaching. All of the essential, heartfelt values in the Book of Psalms, capable of shaping wisdom and firmness in human lives, could have been learned. Had there been real teachers when we were young, were there real teachers in adolescence and in later years, these things could have been learned at a deep level.
What is our Jerusalem?
But by and large, religion has proved to be deficient in that regard. Most people were raised in a religion; certainly not everybody adheres to a religion, and some reject religion or are simply indifferent to it. But we are all infused with these values in something like a cloud-like state, not thick enough to be active in our lives, nonetheless present, no matter how latent and thin. There is a cloud of Judeo-Christian values in us.
Post 3 in this summer series -- What is Missing? Method -- will appear in mid-August.