Thursday, September 15, 2005
103 Dead
Tired doesn’t begin to describe it. Oh my! we could barely drag our dry bones up into life enough to stand up and deal with the little guy this morning. Fussing, kicking, working himself over and over again into grunting, whimpering, crying little places, he started up at 5:30 and just wouldn’t quit. “I can’t do it! I just can’t move,” Lynn-nore groaned, “Can’t you do something with him? I’m so tired!” Two junkies fought over that last hit of sleep. I lost. I’m up patting his belly, his hands and arms flailing around, clutching and releasing my fingers. No luck. I pick him up, rocking side-to-side, placing him against my bare shoulder. He swats at me, raking with sharp baby nails across my face. He head butts me. He tries to throw himself onto the floor. He grabs chest hair and yanks hard. I turn him sideways and rock him. He seems to like this, and lies still without protest. The green LCD from the baby monitor fascinates him, and he arches his back to get a better look. Baby hands move on their own accord. They meet together and shuffle around each other in a nervous tug-of-war; Trumps at a deal. Then it occurs to me: I am holding my son. I look down at him, stretched out, his face worshipful in the green light; his hands as impatient as a capitalist at Sunday prayer; his legs and feet draped out and relaxed in the empty air over my right arm. I will hold you, little one. I’ve got you for a while. I am not tired anymore. The words of Psalm 103 fill fragrantly the silent space between us: “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.” He sucks at his fist while the sun’s slow rising makes the dim room blue around us. Indistinct shapes solidify into the familiar surroundings of home. It is time for me to get cleaned up. Lynn-nore re-animates, putting aside the bedcovers like a corpse putting off a shroud. Bleary, she croaks, “He’s hungry, give him to me.”
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This piece it is hoped would be a treatment of Psalm 103 in narrative form. Psalm 103 is a praise to God who delivers from sin and its death sentence. Note the highlighted word "begin" - the beginning of some processs. In the next line, dry bones begin to move, there is a need which summons us to action. Lynn-nore, symbolizing humanity, is addictive and tired and cannot move to do anything. Caleb is the flesh struggling to life. He rakes and flails against the Father's (yes, I'm a stand-in for the Trinity here) love, but is quieted as I rock him and as he sees a bit of light - though his hands still want to be busy with the world. The Scripture - the words of the Holy Spirit - make the context of this relationship and hold us in this relationship. It bubbles up into visibility with a quotation. As the light grows brighter, Caleb still has a fist, but he's sucking at it now, not beating the air with it. The blue of the room is like the blue of the flood-waters of baptism. There is a conversion going on. Shapes that were chaotic become orderly, following the creation language of spiritual birth and picking up on that highlighted word "begin". Just as in creation, that which was chaotic and dim grows clearer with the operation of the Spirit. Now the sentence, "It is time for me to get cleaned up" seconds the cleansing-idea of baptism. Lynn-nore re-animates (like Lazarus from the tomb). See the corpse imagery. She's rising from sleep re: bedcovers, a nod to Jesus' description of death as sleep, and, unlike before, she speaks. She is the church. This last line is, thus, absolutely a paschal blessing. "He's hungry, give him to me." The title was difficult to come up with, I wanted to suggest what I was doing without totally giving it away, and do so in a pithy way. 103 Dead picks up both the number of the psalm and suggests a deadly disaster, which the consequences of sin creates and which is a proper description of the situation we're in without salvation. Plus, it sounds - as Lynn-nore said to me - like a news report about an accident, and the Psalm is certainly a report about a horrible event.
Oh, I forgot to say. Doing this in this way, I hoped to give an example, too, of the proper way in which Scripture is used in our life; to give an example of the way that the Spirit illuminates Scripture through the process of our lives. It isn't an inner light but real experiences. I am really holding my son - the Psalm really says that God has compassion like a parent for a child, etc. The rest of the narrative connections aren't eisegetical simply because I'm not taking revelation from them, but am reminded by them of the proper ordo salutis, order of salvation, which is the remedy of which Psalm 103 speaks.
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