NSV P.S.U. April 16­18, 1971

This weekend we will do some initial sharing of the first work that has been done relative to using the Psalms for the summer.­ Though there has been no pulling together of a methodology for conversations and discussions, it will be helpful to experiment with the total P.S.U. in the work that has been done to this point. The rationale of the Psalms will be the same as it has been for the past two weekends. However, at the meal Psalm readings, we will use some Conversation. At the other reading times, simply use the reading. It could also be helpful to ask someone to take notes of your conversation /discussions, insights, and questions and include these In the folder to be handed in at the end of the weekend.

Conversation/discussions will be held:

1. Friday night plenary meal

2. Saturday morning breakfast

3. Saturday lunch

4. Saturday supper

5. Sunday morning breakfast

6. Sunday noon Plenary meal

You will be one of the leaders of the conversation/discussion for the Psalm readings at meals 2,3,4, and 5 1isted above. The following is a backdrop of suggestions for leading these sessions, which could go in length up to 45 minutes, but shorter if It seems appropriate.

Saturday Morning Breakfast - Psalm #5

This Is an Imprecatory Psalm, where the Psalmist is calling down curses on his enemies. Read the Psalm and then use context, or vice versa.

The cry about the enemy is the cry against all the demons inside. Foundational is the Psalmist's being. The psalmist cries awe gathers. He thinks of all the innumerable wonders of life. His enemies want him dead. Say untruths about him.

He becomes brutal, wants them dead, destroyed. He's right, they are wrong. He wins; he remembers and carts on God. He rolls up all the demons and calls it one thing.

Hare in the Psalms you're not dealing with the petticoat patches . . .you're at the center. What you're after is to get hold of the state of being of the Psalmist.

What Is the state of losing of the Psalmist? How would you talk about that?

Saturday Lunch

Joe talked on Friday morning about the Cyclorama. Or you look down on the floor and see little people, like in Gul1iver's Travels. Or have you ever stood on a very high peak or building and 1ooked down where people and things going on be low were very little? Have you ever seen a Cyclorama? How would you talk about the experience of being in a cyclorama? What the Psalmist does is take the cyclorama and freeze a picture for you.

Read Psalm #8.

What was going on as you saw the cyclorama?

Whose face is on the others In the cyclorama? (your face)

Saturday Night

Psalms help us they start outside themselves. If you begin with yourself you miss It. The only self is self in situation. If you start with state of being you start with Everyman's experience. Then, you can put yourself in it.

Read Psalm 105

Great humor In this Psalm. It's what you might cal' Impish. Almost Impertinence to God. It's like shaking your fist at God with a smirk on your face....and you remember at the last minute It's God to whom you're talking. Now, think of the Cyclorama Image...or maybe the theater in the round....where you are at the center, on the stage. There are people all around....A light comes on a part of the audience all has your face. The rest of the audience Is in darkness, and you don't know what their faces are. Then, there is God....who Is never seen in the Psalms the mystery. Did you see J.B.? There In the theater in the round you stand. The light now shines. just one you and nothing else. You lift your hand and cry out to God....maybe up, or out. But God is never seen.

Now, put us on your stage and tell us what you see.

One of the things the Psalmist does with hurling or pulling us Into the center is immediately place us on THE JOURNEY. What we know from spirit conversations Is that you move from level down into the center. Here, the Psalms are Just the opposite. We have to find a way to move with the Psalmist back out from the center. Find out what occasioned his state of being that pushed him to the center....then come back with our own images, our own story, back to the center.

How would you talk about that?

Sunday Morning breakfast

Read Psalm 69

Allow silence to linger. Psalm #5

How would you talk about the ontological silence that is in the room right now?

We're In silence, but there's no silence inside. It's not that we're silent, we're in silence.

How would you talk about this silence?

The Ecumenica1 Institute: Chicago

Summer '71 Planning Unit June 9, 1971

PSALMS INTRODUCTION

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, 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 in­o the Center, it'., as if that trip didn't happen. there 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 '?e 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 Lilliputian , and sort of saw Gulliver, as a giant who was looking down into a deep, deep, deep hole. And the. the figures down there were all 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 ores 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 i­till. I don 'et know how many people that would hold, but I suppose it's something like (which ore of the teal, parks really had the whole thing built all around it? Didn't one or them?) Down inside you have a drop, and I always think about it as about as high a 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 or 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

Psalms Introduction page 2

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 ahold of what kind of a platform it is; 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 theater­in­the­round 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 is 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 or 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 mear1 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 shore. 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 God3 and sometimes he'll be talking to all mankind, and then sometimes he'll be talking to this particular person or body

Psalms Introduction page 3

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 of what is going on, he feels free to inject it. Sometimes it's just one line of 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 boasting­like 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 that 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 feel flat on the floor, intense!,' 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'< 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. Yes7 and sometimes I have to study it a long time before I see that his face is really my race. 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 Goo has bumbled up the whole damn thing. Well 7 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 or 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 just 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 ~­hen 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, it 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. Your liberal approach was you locate the external

Psalms Introduction

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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 do 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 un-untieable knot.