Psalm 8 — the Back Parts of God

As you see the grace of the Savior extended everywhere, so many being saved, if you wish to raise your voice to the Lord, sing Psalm 8; or you can use the same psalm as well as 84 in thanksgiving for the vintage harvest.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

Did David, the shepherd, compose this after being out with the sheep all night and seeing the glory of the night sky?

This psalm gives us so many quotes that are part of Western culture, such as "what is man that thou art mindful of him?". I love this one and it has clearly touched so many deeply that they wanted to give the context of its joy and praise in their own writing.

Thierry Legault, The Veil nebula (NGC 6992) in Cygnus,
with permission
See more images and this one larger at Mr. Legault's website.

Here is the insight that I love the most.

8:1 The Lord's Name is Majestic

Only the Back Parts of God. Gregory of Nazianzus: The Majesty, or as holy David calls it, the Glory, is manifested among the creatures that it has produced and governs. These are the back parts of God, which he leaves behind him, as tokens of himself like the shadows and reflections of the sun in the water, which show the sun to our weak eyes, because we cannot look at the sun himself, for by his unmixed light he is too strong for our power of perception.  On Theology, Theological Oration

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

This is just the best, referring back to Moses in Exodus 33:19–23 when he asks to see God's face and is told that he'd be overcome and so will get to see the back of God. Here we are with creation, as Gregory tells us, seeing God's back parts. Just wonderful.

Now on to some of the other great insights inspired by this psalm.

Balancing Deity and Humanity

It seems to me that I seldom meet any strong or exultant sense of the continued, never-to-be-abandoned, Humanity of Christ in glory, in eternity. We stress the Humanity too exclusively at Christmas, and the Deity too exclusively after the Resurrection; almost as if Christ once became a man and then presently reverted to being simply God. We think of the Resurrection and Ascension (rightly) as great acts of God; less often as the triumph of Man. The ancient interpretation of the Psalm 8, however arrived at, is a cheering corrective.

C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

What is mankind ...?

The dignity of human beings is stressed in this passage in a way unparalleled in the ancient Near East. According to Mesopotamian sources, men and women were created to relieve the workload on the lesser gods who were forced to cultivate land in order to feed the gods. When the growing human population became too noisy, the gods thought to extinguish human existence through the great flood. As a result of the flood, food offerings to the gods were no longer forthcoming. Only then did the gods find that humans were nonexpendable after all. Although humanity survived the flood, the gods decreed certain afflictions to keep the population from ever growing out of control again. According to Ps 8, far from being expendable slaves to the gods, human beings are the special objects of the Creator's care in the vast universe.

NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

8:3 The Work of God's Fingers

Makes One Wonder. John Chrysostom: "What is it about human beings?" ... Taking full account of such marvelous care and such wonderful providence on God's part, and the arrangements he put in place for the salvation of the human race, [the psalmist] is struck with complete wonder and amazement as to why on earth God considered them worthy of attention. Consider, after all, that all the visible things were done for their sake. For them the design implemented from the time of Adam up to his coming; for them paradise, commandments, punishments, miracles, retribution, kindnesses after the Law; for them the Son of God became human. What could anyone say of the future they are intended to enjoy? So all those things are going through his mind when he says, to be thought worthy of such wonderful privileges, what must the human being be? I mean, if you consider what was done and is being done for their sake, and what they will enjoy afterwards, you will be stricken with awe, and then you will see clearly how this being is an object of such attention on God's part. Commentary on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

I also love this connection to Genesis and God's creation.

Sheep and oxen / ... birds of the heavens and fish of the sea.

The language of this compact but embracing catalogue is  a deliberate recasting in somewhat different words of the first Creation story ever, but the audience of the poem is surely meant to hear in all this a beautiful poetic reprise of Genesis 1. The eye moves downward vertically in the poem from the heavens to the divine beings who are God's entourage to man's feet and, below those, to the beasts of the field and then to what swims through the sea (which no longer harbors a primordial sea beast).

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Lord, our Master, / how majestic Your name in all the earth.

Although biblical literature, in poetry and prose, exhibits considerable fondness for envelope structures, in which the end somehow echoes the beginning, this verbatim repetition of the first line as the last, common in other poetic traditions, is unusual. It closes a perfect circle that celebrates the harmony of God's creation. ...

Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: The Writings

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

A Movie You Might Have Missed: 34

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.  

I'll just get this out of the way first. This might be the worst poster/dvd cover I've ever seen for a movie.

Be not afraid. Watch it anyway.

This movie's unique blend of talent includes Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow. If it is hard to imagine what they all have in common, then you are in the right frame of mind for Be Kind Rewind.

Mr. Fletcher's (Danny Glover) Be Kind Rewind VHS rental store is in decline. Despite his claims that jazz pianist Fats Waller was born there, the building housing his business is going to be demolished unless he can finance renovation. When Mr. Fletcher goes on an annual trip to memorialize Fats Waller, he leaves sole employee, Mike (Mos Def), to tend the store.

Naturally this is when things go very wrong. Through a freak magnetic accident, all the tapes in the store are erased, leaving Mike and his friend Jerry (Jack Black) to come up with a way to satisfy rental customers. They reshoot movies on demand using their own cameras.

Part of this movie's charm is the combination of standard bumbling comedy with wacky brilliance. Fair warning: the first part is a bit more of what one expects from a Jack Black movie. When we watched it with friends during a movie night, my husband and I looked at each other thinking, "What have we done?"

However, the middle and end suddenly take an unexpected turn which winds up combining a love of movies, personal creativity, history, community, and ... of course ... Fats Waller, whose story is wound through the movie. (For the record, our friends loved it.)

By the way, this was directed by Michael Gondry who is known for his distaste of CGI. This has led to some very creative sets and movie making in order to come up with effects in his movies. A wonderful example in this movie is when Mike and Jerry are on the chain link fence. Just watch for it. You'll see what I mean.

Meguro Drum Bridge and Sunset Hill

Hiroshige, Meguro Drum Bridge and Sunset Hill, 1857

If the divine creator has taken pains to give us ...

If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is to serve them with ceremony.

Fernand Point, La Pyramide

Ida Lupino, They Drive By Night

 

Ida Lupino in They Drive By Night, costume by Milo Anderson
via Silver Screen Modes

The Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armour on Horseback

Giuseppe Castiglione, The Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armour on Horseback, 1758
Via Wikimedia

No special reason for this ... I just liked it!

None of the virtues are simple.

"Dealing with him was distasteful," she said. "He was similar to some of our donors. Outwardly quite charming, but I don't value charm. There are other qualities I value, such as perseverance and honesty." My face must have changed. She smiled again. "You have a right to disbelieve that, after what you've heard, but honesty is a complicated virtues."

"I always thought it was one of the simpler ones."

"None of the virtues are simple," Margaret O'Connor told me. "Only the sins."

S.J. Rozan, Concourse

A Movie You Might Have Missed #33 — Sunset Blvd.

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed. 

"The poor dope. He always wanted a pool."

This movie starts off watching a dead man floating in a pool, with a voice over from the man himself. You then hear this quote and you remember that Billy Wilder's dialogue crackles with verve and multiple layers of meaning. We then flash back to see the story of Joe who is an aspiring screenwriter but on the run from repo men when he dodges into a driveway to throw them off the track. He finds a dilapidated house from the 1920's and Gloria Swanson as the equally dilapidated former silent screen star who lives in the past and is planning her comeback. Joe finds himself lured into becoming her rewrite man and gigolo.

It is an unforgettable film that is a blistering expose of Hollywood which still holds true today. Interestingly many stars of the silent screen had parts in this to add authenticity and Cecil B. DeMille actually played a much more significant role than we would have thought ... and did so with surprising gentleness and charm.

Cemetery Gates

Cemetery Gates, Marc Chagall, 1917
via Wikipaintings

This painting fascinates me. First, because I love cemeteries. Walking in them, photos or paintings of them ... I am drawn to them and, to a large degree, find them soothing. This is not really soothing, instead being energetic.

The gate is marked with Hebrew. The shape of the sky behind the tombs looks like crosses rising into the air (that is my Catholic lens, I realize), the blue is bright and full of energy and draws me up away from the somber lighting around the gates and ground. It seems full of hope ... expectancy ... and active.

"Me," said Poirot, "I lead a very moral life."

"The English," said Poirot, "are a very moral people."

Lord Dittisham said: "Confound them, they are!"

He added, looking at Poirot, "And you?"

"Me," said Poirot, "I lead a very moral life. That is not quite the same thing as having moral ideas."

Agatha Christie, Five Little Pigs

Psalm 7 — God Has Prepared His Deadly Weapons

When certain people plot against you, as did Ahithophel against David, and you are informed of this, sing Psalm 7, and place your trust in God, who will deliver you..

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15

Another lament. So many laments in a row. This one, though, has some interesting twists such as showing God threatening the enemy and the psalmist saying, "Hey I haven't been perfect in the past, but this time I definitely deserve justice."

7:6, The Fury of Enemies

Arise, he says, using the word to mean "appear"; he employs a human and obscure expression as though God were asleep, when really he is hidden and unrecognized in his secret plans.

St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms

Yes. How often does this happen to us too?

7:8, My Righteousness and Integrity

Not Perfect Righteousness. Theodoret of Cyr: In these words the divine David has not left a testimony to his own righteousness: we hear him protesting the opposite, "because I acknowledge my lawlessness, and my sin is always before me"; and, "I said, 'I shall declare my lawlessness against myself to the Lord,'" but he calls it justice in the matter before us. I committed no wrong, in fact, he is saying against Absalom or Ahithophel or those arrayed in battle with them against me. So I beg to be judged in the light of this righteousness and innocence and not in the light of the faults previously committed by me. I ask for judgment on these current grounds and not for a payment of penalty at this time for other sins.  Commentary on  the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

This strikes me in the light of confession and being able to pick ourselves up, trust in God's forgiveness, and moving forward to try to do better.

7:12, God's Weapons Prepared

Yahweh prepares to mete out the punishment ... stringing and drawing the bow and preparing to let fly with flaming arrows at the enemy. This well-drawn portrait of the ready archer stops just short of release — bow straining, eye on the target; Yahweh is poised, ready to act. The picture encourages the enemies to reconsider their opposition in light of Yehweh's sure defense of the righteous.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

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I would happily understand [the bow in this verse] as the holy Scriptures, where the rigidity of the Old Testament is bent and subdued by the strength of the New Testament, as by some sort of bowstring. The apostles are launched from it like arrows, or divine proclamations are hurled from it. These arrows he has fashioned ... to make those who are struck by them blaze with the love of God. ... Once struck by these and set on fire by them, you must blaze with so great a love for the kingdom of heaven that you scorn the tongues of all who block your path and want to call you back from your fixed resolve. ...

St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms

I like the point that thinking of what Yahweh can unleash might make the enemy change his mind. How often I've had that same experience — often by considering that I'd have to confess a deed I was contemplating. Nothing like that for making you choose the righteous path instead of sin.

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

Red Hen

 

Red Hen, Himmapaan.

Mistake and Imagination

Your mistake was not in imagining things you could not know — that is, after all, what imagination is for. Rather, your mistake was in unthinkingly treating what you imagined as though it were an accurate representation of the facts.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling Into Happiness

How the Whale Got His Throat

How the Whale Got His Throat, illustrated by Himmapaan
Illustration for How the Whale got his Throat, in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories,
published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies by The Folio Society, 2012

Which Way to Go From Here

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where –” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“– so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Jesus' Resemblance to Joseph

Jesus must have resembled Joseph in his way of working, in the traits of his character and in his way of speaking. Jesus' realism, his eye for detail, the way he sat at table and broke bread, his preference for using everyday situations in his teaching — all this reflects his childhood and the influence of Joseph.

St. Josemaria Escriva, Christ is Passing By

White-Tailed Eagle

White-Tailed Eagle, Remo Savisaar

 

Reading all the immense annotated editions of the classics

Another gem from Edmund Crispin. In this case from The Case of the Gilded Fly.

He had bought, and read, all the immense annotated editions of the classics in which the greater part of every page is occupied with commentary (with a slight gesture to the author in the form of a trickle of text up at the top, towards the page number).

A Snowman Straight Out of Miyazaki

 I picked this up from J.R.'s Art Place where he says:

A friend pointed out that this snowman looks like he stepped out of a Hayao Miyazaki film.

Woman with a snowman, early 20th century. Collotype with hand coloring; unknown photographer, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Of course, after featuring My Neighbor Totoro yesterday, I couldn't resist sharing this.

Psalm 6 – Prayer for Healing

When you feel the Lord's displeasure, if you see that you are troubled by this, you can say Psalm 6.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms 15

There is great food for thought in the points made about asking God to judge as a father and not an authority. There is a nice difference there in the love and personal concern that a father brings versus a more disinterested judge. Surely that is the frame of mine we should always have when we turn to God.

Also, the idea that the psalmist is asking God to restore the right, the intended, order is one that reminds me about how the world was meant to be, versus what it is.

I like the way this illustration shows David surrounded by dangers — a wild animal, a man with weapons, a centaur — but he keeps his eyes on God.

Psalm 6 illustration from A Book of Hours from Namur

6:1, Not in Anger

Like a Father, Not a Judge. Theodoret of Cyr: He does not beg to be uncensured but rather not to be censured in anger, nor does he plead to avoid discipline but not to suffer it with wrath. Discipline me like a father, he asks, not like a judge; like a physician, not like a torturer. Do not fit the punishment to the crime; instead, temper justice with lovingkindness.  Commentary on  Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

6:3, How Long, O Lord, How Long?

The psalmists did not lament just the personal, individual, or societal suffering they saw and experienced. They also complained because ... the rightness that should have been an integral part of a world created by Yahweh seemed to have run amok in suffering, pain, injustice, oppression, and death. Life was not just difficult, it was not only painful, it was also very, very wrong.

... The psalmists' sense of rightness demanded that God act to reestablish his intended order. Thus, the psalmists felt free to ask, "God, what are you doing? Where are you?" By these tough questions hurled at God the psalmists were aligning themselves with the tough-minded worldview that the world as we have it is not the world as it should be or as God intended . The world is broken and needs divine help to restore it.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

 Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here.