“Praise
the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with
splendor and majesty.” Psalm 104
So we stumbled through Chicago, via
its interstate system. We thought to avoid rush hour traffic by coming through the
city mid-morning—and on a weekend. No
matter. Those of us not accustomed to spending hours in traffic find being at
the mercy of unending traffic snarls infuriating. All the way through—from the Indiana border to the Wisconsin state line—we were locked in.
Just off those angry highways,
people were laughing and singing, watching soccer games and eating fresh, crisp
salads. I know that. Dogs were chasing frisbees, and park pools were
teeming with happy kids. But on the
road, those highways were anything but super. Actually made me want to sing
“Home on the Range,” top of my voice, in shameful self-righteousness.
If Psalm 104 didn’t include so much
about the sea, I’d like to think of it as a cowboy tune because in its range
and vision Psalm 104 suggests a writer who is sitting beneath a big sky, the
kind one can’t see from bottle-necked traffic, nor from city life itself (or so
it seems to this country boy). Which is
not to say that all many farmers hum Psalm 104 in their air-conditioned cabs
while pulling half-million dollar combines.
But I can visualize the splendor and
majesty of the God of verse one best in nature. I suppose I could find him on a
busy city street too, in the sheer breathlessness of immense human activity. But,
like the Psalmist, I prefer the country. Give me a partly cloudy dawn from a
chunk of highland prairie, and I’ll show you his splendor and glory.
I once heard a Lakota healer talk
about addiction, particularly alcoholism. He said that the indigenous way of
dealing with significant problems was, basically, to honor them, because
anything that carries the wallop of alcohol should not be hidden away but given
a spiritual existence by acknowledging it, honoring it, even making it a
relative. In the words of the healer, “you ask it to be your teacher.” When he
did that, he said, alcohol became, in his view, the most important teacher he
ever had.
At that point in his description, it
seemed clear that this man’s Lakota ways had morphed into verifiable human
truth, his culture had become all cultures. The Chinese character for crisis, I’m told, contains both danger
and opportunity. If our curses can become blessings, then it’s completely
understandable how the horrors of alcoholism could become, for him and for all
of us, not only opportunity but deep and abiding inspiration as well.
It seems clear to me that the person
who is not sorry for the things he or she has done wrong will never understand
forgiveness—and thus, more significantly, grace. But this morning, with that
Lakota healer’s talk about his alcoholism, I have a different kind of vision of
God’s glory and radiance, his splendor and majesty; for in him alone can we
find dancing even within our
mourning—and that’s majestic. He uses our sin, the very worst of what we are,
to teach us his grace.
In his splendor, even those loathful
traffic jams can morph into emerald landscapes and unending azure skies.
As the Psalmist says in the opening line of this memorable
psalm of praise, you are, Lord, very, very great.
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