The Silent Word of the Way
A reflection on Psalm 19, which C.S. Lewis named the greatest poem in the Psalter.
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“The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork…"
“…The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul…”
Each morning, before the rose hue begins its glow in the East, I slip on my rubber boots and trudge across the backyard to our chicken coop. There I find our four hens snuggled in the hay of their laying box, its door latched shut to protect them from a wondering raccoon or prowling opossum. Now that day is near, those dangers have mostly passed, so I open the hatch, hang their feeder from a hook and let them loose to their run.
I have come to appreciate this walk, each morning, as short as it is. Even though I live near an interstate, and the sounds of the city seem to echo through our neighborhood, this time of early morning is quiet, like a pause in a conversation between two people. Night has almost come to a close, it has said its word, and the day is near, ready to speak. I stand in this moment between what has been said and the response and I listen.
An ancient poet, perhaps David himself, experienced a moment like this one. The blazing stars began to fade, and then, the sky grew radiant with red as the sun marched forth like an athlete, proud in victory. What this poet saw in this transition from day to night, this rising of the sun, wasn’t simply the working out of a mechanism, the spinning of a clock through the power of a God who long ago wound the knob. No, the poet saw a great conversation, a common chorus in which God was the very grammar that gave the jumbled wonders sense.
Psalm 19, as we know it now, will be among the Revised Common Lectionary readings for this Sunday. And while preachers tend to gravitate toward the Gospel or Old Testament lesson, this is an opportunity to make an exception. Psalm 19, wrote C.S. Lewis, is “the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” We would do well, then, to not simply recite it, but to dwell with its verses.
The conversation the Psalm invites us into begins with creation. The day and the night talk with one another, the skies make a proclamation, the atmosphere gives witness. And what is the subject of this conversation? The glory of God. The world, the whole of creation, even if they have no “words or language,” even if they make expression only in silence, speak of the wonders of God. All things are joined in worship, that is their nature.
But then, the Psalm takes a strange turn. From creation, we turn to Torah—the law of the Lord. Law, here, is not quite the right term, at least as we hear it now. If we read those books that make up what the tradition has called the Torah we find stories more than sanctions, narrative more than nomos. The statues, the commandments, the judgements that revive the soul, that are more precious than gold and sweeter than honey are not simply codes to be followed. The law is, again, that grammar at the heart of the world, the ordering of language that makes the conversation possible.
Reflecting on this, I thought of another insight of C.S. Lewis, not from his work on the Psalms, but from his important and ever more relevant book The Abolition of Man. There he seeks to name the fundamental rhythm of human life, the flowing truth that people, throughout the world, have found as the source of goodness. Lewis borrows from the Chinese philosophical tradition and calls this reality the Tao. “It is the reality beyond all predicates…” writes Lewis, “It is Nature, its is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time.” Deep within all things, the Tao is the measure of human life and action. “It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of things we are.”
My sophomore philosophy major self, dazzled by a surface reading of Foucault and Derrida and Rorty, would have scoffed at such an account of a deep universal Way. But as I have grown into middle age, I have come to see the reality of such a beating rhythm at the heart of all things, a givenness of truth and goodness to which we are called to move our steps. Without it, the world simply becomes a plastic landscape ready to bend to our whims, our unchecked desires. And as a result, the world unravels in blazing fires and catastrophic floods, broken lives and relationships and communities. This destruction comes not by active judgement but through simple consequence. And in the face of such chaos, lacking a Way in which to join the rhythm of our lives, we tempted toward power and control in its most brazen forms as a desperate attempt toward an order we make ourselves.
Torah is a Tao. There’s danger of course in overlaying two traditions, each developed over thousands of years. But we should not let such danger keep us from seeing the common concepts, or gaining the help of comparison. The Psalmist speaks of the Law as a Way, a form of life into which we are called to mold ourselves. The work of our lives is to listen, in the still and quiet rhythm of its truth, and move our lives onto its path. “Who can tell how often he offends?” the poet writes, “cleanse me from my secret faults.” This is a word of humility; a recognition that we cannot always see how far our lives have strayed by our own powers. But here we also find hope and help. The Torah, is not simply a cold, impersonal feature of the world as some interpretations of the Tao are. It is the Law of the Lord, and that Lord is a humble and personal God who will come to instruct and guide, heal and save if we open ourselves to God’s Way.
In this way, the Psalm ends in praise of the God who is “my strength and my redeemer.” If we are to have the energy, the power to join in the pattern of life that the Law provides, we will do so not through our own efforts but by joining in the endless life of God. This is what eternal life is about, not so much an endless succession of days, but a grounding in the very reality that is life.
It is in the context of that life, from its grounding and power, that all of our meditations and words should flow. That our language and thoughts should be acceptable to God is not simply a matter of moral judgement, but of sense itself. Like the language of the day and night, the communication at the heart of all creation, we are invited into the great conversation grounded in the grammar of worship. The question the Psalm asks of us is this, will we join the common song and let our lives move to the rhythm of the Way, call it Torah or Tao, or will we seek to make our own meanings, pushing the brute violence of our choice, the raving dance of our desires?
The day answers the night, the stars sing with the wordless praise of being, and the grammar of all things asks us to join in saying, “Glory be to God, forever and ever. Amen.”
As a someone who battles with post-concussion syndrome that makes my mind sometimes stray from the thinking right thoughts. I wanted to thank you today, for helping me to get back to the the right path/way. - Peace
Reality… yes! The reality that underlies all of the surface-y things we tend to focus on. The reality that is felt more than understood. The reality that literally sustains the planet and all life. Yes to what is REAL!
I am reminded of one of my favorite Bible verses… Romans 1:20, “For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.”