The Ecumenical Institute: Chicago
Summer '71 Planning Unit
June 9, 1971
I have been thinking recently of just what devotional
literature is; in my mind, of making a difference between the
literature for mediation and the literature of devotion. I don't
ask you to do that. But to try to separate out from other kinds
of literature what devotional literature is, or devotional poetry.
When a group of men who were not as familiar with the Psalms as
some of the rest of us were attempting to get hold of the Psalms,
and just had fantastic rebellion against them, I read some secular
poetry. I read 'what if a which of a much of a wind bit this universe
in two' and so on. I even read 'Buffalo Bill! ' They didn't have
too much problem with that. But the Psalms made them extremely
hostile and angry.
Now, any kind of poetry that is good poetry deals
with the deeps of humanness. Psalms, or things like the Psalms,
or things like the Psalms, are set off from that, and it seems
to me it's something like another kind of poetry for a moment
takes you some place and then leads you some place.
Takes you here and then leads you to the Center, or in the direction
of the Center. (I'm afraid a lot of it didn't get you very far
in that direction.) The Psalms, it seems to me, or devotional
poetry, just inverts that. It begins with you directly at the
Center. It catapults you into the Center' but even that isn't
right, because in taking you by the feet and yanking you down
into the Center, it's as if that trip didn't happen. Where consciousness
shows up you are standing at the Center. And then if there is
any movement, you finally move yourself into the everyday surfaces
of life, if I can use that figure. But they're concerned only
with the white, hot, goingoneness at the Center of being
itself.
If we are to hear the Psalms, and I mean hear them;
if we are to listen to them in our day, then we have a heavy methodological
job. In our work, we discovered we had to build and I tell
you recently, I have felt that we have felt that we are something
like a stage manager for some great DeMille production in which
you have to build whole Roman cities, and the like. We had to
do that kind of a construction job in order to be able to grasp
what it meant to be pulled invisibly by the feet into the Center
of being itself. Now, this could have been done many ways, but
the construct that we finally hammered out, and I suppose scores
of peoples' minds have gone into it, is what is graphically before
you. Over here to my left. That's what we built. I think it was
Lois Zollars that first brought to our attention Gulliver, and
the Lilliputians, and sort of saw Gulliver, as a giant who was
looking down into a deep, deep, deep hole. And that the figures
down there were about that high. I guess the Lilliputians were
about 6 inches, weren't they? It's like being way up in an airplane,
and looking down at automobiles that look like the things kids
play with. And yet in our day, you would have telescope or camera.
I suppose when you are way up there, coming close in where you
would make one of those little ones into a giant itself. Anyway,
when you look down in there, you have something like the Roman
Coliseum in which you have a circle or an oval with the masses
of people gathered it's full. I don't know how many people
that would hold, but I suppose it's something like (which one
of the ball parks really had the whole thing built all around
it? Didn't one of them?) Down inside you have a drop, and I always
think about it as about as high as that ceiling or more. It had
to be high enough so the lions couldn't leap up over the good
peoples' section.
You had the hole of a circle with that wall around,
and then down in the arena, you had various audiences
specific audiences. Maybe they were all the same people, I don't
know. Townley insists they are sort of vague and in a way he is
right, but sometimes it is very clear that they are the good guys
in the world, and sometimes it is very clear that they are the
bad guys in the world, and sometimes they have all the children
of Israel arrayed down in there; other times all the gods of this
world are assembled down in there.
Right in the center there is a vacant spot, and I
think it's raised up a little bit. I really believe down in the
middle but it's hard to get a hold of what kind of
a platform it is. I sometimes thought it was like that Miss American
platform, you know, that sticks out into the congregation? And
sometimes I think it's more like the theatreintheround
kind of a platform, and the Psalmist performs here. When he is
performing, he's really in the very center of it.
Now on that wall around the side of 81012
feet, that's like a cyclorama. Have you been to Atlanta to see
that cyclorama of the Civil War? It's really something. This one
can throw images on and take them off, and light them up here
and light them up there and light them up someplace else. It's
almost as if the Psalmist, as he is speaking, or being spoken
to, that he operates this cyclorama. That is, he gives the image
of a volcano a volcano goes off over there. Sometimes
I think that you have two cycloramas one inside of
the other, and one of the cycloramas gives the images out of your
own mind that come as response to the images of the Psalmist.
But it is not a selfconscious response. You have to think
a little bit to get hold of the image of the Psalmist that provokes
this flood of images in your own mind. Sometimes I've felt that
one of these cycloramas, the one that represents this maze of
images of your own, has about a million more of these images than
the Psalmist has. So either these are very small, or they have
some kind of a mechanism that will allow you to see a hundred
images in relationship to one. But you sort of get that picture.
And I mean that goes on like fireworks down there. The lighting
of this is extremely intriguing. Right exactly in the center of
that from I don't know where, there is one of those little tiny
spots that is just as bright as all hell, and gets a guy in a
small circle, and everything else is thick blackness outside.
Then they have a kind of rheostat arrangement where
sometimes the audience is kept so dim sometimes it's
kept in pitch black and other times lights come onjust vague
lights and other times they become strong lights.
Sometimes the spot on the Psalmist disappears and all you see
are those people there. Or they have ways in which they throw
spots on segments of them and then another group. And above it
all, and this is sort of like the dome thing down in Houston over
the whole thing. This gets awful complicated, because remember
Gulliver is standing up there looking down on it all
but you have pitch darkness up above where those people are sitting.
I mean it is pitch darkness. From time to time there comes a voice
out of there. You'll be very interested that these guys never
portray God as some kind of a creature. It's always out of pitch
darkness, whatever else is going on, that a voice comes. And how
you get that darkness over it all with Gulliver still seeing through
it, is a little bewildering to me. But don't be surprised if in
this very room the miraculous enters in, to say nothing about
the supernatural. It's got that kind of a feel to it.
The audience I might mention a little
bit on those. Or the actors. Sometimes the audience really participates
in speaking. And some people have overdone this in the Psalms,
I think. But you can feel after that, and one of these days we'll
get at one in which the whole damn place down there goes wild
just wild.
One of the most interesting parts of the dramatic
movement is that you will notice that the Psalmist will sometimes
be talking to God, and sometimes he'll be talking to all mankind,
and then sometimes he'll be talking to this particular person
or body of people, and sometimes he talks to his soul. For the
life of me that would be hard for me to portray there. He says
such things as "Bless the Lord, O my soul" and the soul
blesses the Lord. One of the most fascinating parts of this is
that everybody seems to be overhearing everybody else. You'll
be out there talking to mankind, and the Lord up there in the
darkness is listening. And if he especially approves o f what
is going on, he feels free to inject it. Sometimes it's just one
line - or if he wants to back that Psalmist up
he feels his case is getting a little weak there
he addresses the whole of mankind. One of the other very dramatic
sequences if when the Psalmist is up there boasting like hell
about how the Lord is going to bale him out of every situation,
and insecurity sets in in a line or two he says 'you are, aren't
you, Lord?' and then he goes back. 'The Lord is going to bale
me out!' This is a part of the important drama that is in these
Psalms.
Probably the most shocking thing is that you up there
as Gulliver, and you get the. telescope focused and get those
close ups well, I feel like I'm always able to spot
myself. I'm in the arena on the low level. I think I'm on the
third row, as I experience myself sort of what is
to me the right hand side. I think the chairs are lined
up sort of like our worship service. I'm on the third row and
just about the fourth row in. I always recognize myself, because
I'm always sitting forward with my feet flat on the floor, intensely
watching what is going on,just consumed. Sometimes, perhaps
with tears in my eye, and with very frequently a sly grin on my
face, and then an expression like 'My God, is this really what's
going on here?'
When I look at any of the upper galleries, I look
at any face there and find it mine. And then from time to time
down in the arena, I'm able to spot my face on the face of many,
many people, and when I look closely at the Psalmist, but there
is a pause here for me, it's like I have to study it for a moment.
Yes, and sometimes I have to study it a long time before I see
that his face is really my face. The pause in that, and some of
you are quite well aware of this - you have to get this thing
clear through yourself. In these Psalms, I mean sometimes that
Psalmist is brutal on God. I mean he tells God very clearly how
to go about being God. And indicates that God has bumbled up the
whole damn thing. Well, see you have to ask your question. When
was the last time you told God that he was fouling up and damn
well better take your approach to it. You see, you don't see your
face on that Psalmist until you are able to say "yeah, hear
- hear hear."
And then on that panorama. The Psalms use a fantastic
imagery. Like this and you know about this, when
life is squeezing at you it might be coming at you
through your wife or your husband or your kids or
some colleague or some little financial problem. Now in this dimension,
you never experience it in ones. That always seems like a million.
So they use figures like "I was surrounded by mad dogs",
and it was ,us; because his wife told him to go to hell last night.
He's surrounded by mad dogs or surrounded hedged
in by wild oxen, as they say. You got that figure? Or, pressed
on every side by wicked men. And then the rocking thing was one
day when one of our group pointed out that when you got that telescope
pointed on those mad dogs, it was your face. On account of the
only guy that can hedge you in in a thousand ways, is you yourself
when you are at the Center of being.
You and I have to, if we are going to help people,
go through the veil, is to blast with ruthless force, the
approach of liberalism to the Psalms, which all of you were conditioned
in who went to seminary. I said up here this morning, that as
we were starting out the first job we had to do is to call in
all of the seminary degrees. That was rough, you'd be surprised
how attached some of us get to our seminary degrees. But once
we got them all called in, things went very smoothly. You liberal
approach was you locate the external circumstances, such as the
king was defeated in a battle, and therefore this Psalm was talking
about it. Or David was a shepherd, and he was sheeping it up in
the 23rd Psalm. You see that is exactly what devotional poetry
is not. It starts from the beginning.
What you are dealing with in the Psalms is no external
happening. My illustration of this is, one day your father dies.
That's quite an external thing, you know. A week later, two years
later, two years later, ten years later, something happens to
that happening. You got that picture? The Psalms are dealing not
with a happening, but with a happening inside that happening,
a happening that explodes that implodesthat
happening. It has to do with the very deeps of your own interior
existence. This is why you can say some people can have their
mother die and it does next to nothing inside. As a matter of
fact, you find people who were finally damned relieved that mama
was called to her heavenly reward. And others, it just tears the
bottom out of their very being. It's that second that you are
dealing with when you are dealing with the Psalms. It's the happening
inside the happening.
Once again, that means we start from the Center.
Oh, we'll have some fun when we start to begin to weave our way
back up to the surface. And then to play a little game as to what
happened the night before that occasioned this happening today
within that happening that belched out this Psalm. When you do
that, you are always writing a novel. You are always writing a
play. You don't give a damn about historicity at this point except
that the novel you write is historical in the sense of the existential
dimension. This enables you to get back to the everydayness of
life to which your everydayness to which
the Psalms are tied. By an invisible, but untieable knot.
PSALMS .METHODOLOGY
It is so easy to categorize them as songs of praise.
Take the 150th. What is going on there? Now I'm not sure. There
is a prelude and a postlude; and this happens, as you know, in
several psalms maybe all told ten; six of them I
think are at the end. I think maybe the psalmist is walking into
the center, walking out of nowhere to the center, and the spotlight
is down in the deeps, the single spot, is on him as he comes in;
and I think he turns something like this and he says: "Praise
the Lord!" And then suddenly the lights come up in the arena
slowly, very slowly as the group begins something like a chant
which becomes wilder and wilder and the lights get brighter and
brighter. And as they get brighter in the arena they dimly come
on in the gallery and before they finish the whole of the coliseum
is flooded in light, and in the midst of the light increasing
in intensity the people have risen to their feet and the noise
has increased many, manyfold until finally it is something
like an orgy is going on. And suddenly at the end, pitch darkness
for a second is there and then the single light comes on the psalmist
once again as he walks off into nothing and he gives the postlude,
"Praise the Lord"' I don't know. Think on this. I think
if you don't get the staging of it we probably never will know
what is going on.
I'm slowly reaching the conclusion that the only
conversation you can have on the psalms is the one we piddled
with just a little bit, and that is reconstructingno, that's
not right creating the drama that induced the psalm.
Now you will notice that that is exactly the opposite from our
Spirit Conversations. You start with the drama, concrete drama
in your life like Mrs. Elizabeth Black who was my
sixth grade teacher, and the drama of the relationship of young
Joe and Mrs. Black. And you begin that 2nd then push through it
to the transparency; push through it, if you please, push into
it. With the psalm you start beyond the transparency and then
you have to create a play that induced this experience. Nobody
ever wrote a play that was not dealing with his own life; but
it is his own life pushed into the universal if he knew what he
was doing. This is again quite the reverse of the Spirit Conversations
in which you begin with the utter particular. Now when you write
this play, sure you are dealing with your own life, but the universal
in the sense of what it means to be human. Hess brought me this
Steppenwolf from Hesse and had underlined this statement or two:
It was not in my power to verify the truth of the
experiences related in Harry's manuscript. I have no doubt that
they are for the most part fictitious; not, however, in the sense
of arbitrary invention. They are rather the deeply lived spirit
events he has attempted to express by giving them the form of
tangible experiences.
That has said much better what in my stumbling way
I have tried to get said about those plays, those dramas we write.
I want to say one other word there. I wonder if this is the conversation.
Everything else we do is almost direct pedagogy. Maybe I'd better
change it: it is directindirect pedagogy other
kinds of conversations we have. I'm not quite sure about this,
but if we assume that something close to what I've said is correct,
then we need to think through the methodology of holding that
kind of conversation I don't like that word,