“AWAY WE SOAR!”
PSALM 124
A Song of Goodnesses–For the Beloved.
What if it had never been,
this Becoming of Love within us?
Let’s just say we would have wrestled with God forever.
And if this Becoming of Love had never been,
could our earthling souls have ever awakened?
Wouldn’t our life have swallowed us?
–rage eating us alive,
–tsunami of hate drowning our hearts,
–dark river of fear flooding our throats,
–insolence cresting and crushing us!
Bless you, Becoming!
Without you, we would have been
just a gift of toothy prey for deathly jaws.
Now, our soul flies, like a bird from the snare;
the snare is broken - away we soar!
Oh, our Helper–Unspoken Name!
Forge earth, vault sky–be never tame!
Psalm 124, rendered from the Hebrew by Henry Ralph Carse
Aristotle wrote of “The Unmoved Mover,” the unchanging source of a shifting world. Later, Christianity described God as “eternal” in the same sense: unchanged by uncertainties, but compassionate also. We now see that the Unspoken Name at the heart of the scriptural tradition is the “Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh” (YHWH) – the traces of sheer Becoming, revealed on earth in the Burning Bush of life. This divine presence is not “unmoved.” It flickers ceaselessly, like flames, but is faithful and abides, “eternal” in a deeper sense. In Psalm 124, we meet again this Name – this “sheer Becoming.”
In our lives, there is always the “becoming of something.” Things emerge and fade, come into being and die away. So often, when we translate the divine, we use “attributes” – like “omnipotent,” “eternal,” “perfect.” Israel’s experience, historically, is full of attributes, and our lives are too. Still, beneath the flow of these modes of being we can return, in each moment, to “sheer Becoming.”
In each psalm, we find the becoming of something different. Sometimes, “Strength” is a good rendering, or “Truth,” or “Grace.” Here, in Psalm 124, I have rendered the Name as “Becoming of Love.” When these psalms were composed, that love was perceived in ancient Israel (“who wrestles with God”) as a masterful protection against vicious external foes. In our present contemplative tradition, we may understand, that Love becomes as we “take arms” against our demons of rage, hatred, fear, and blind pride. This inner work of goodness – this “Becoming of Love” - can take a lifetime, but at every moment, it makes freedom more possible.
The powerful metaphor of the broken snare, and the bird soaring free, is one of the most moving images of the spiritual quest, in any scripture.
Henry Ralph Carse