Flung

Psalm 22 (CJB— agrees with Alter)

^11 (10) Since my birth I’ve been thrown on you;
you are my God from my mother’s womb.

Lamentations 3:1-9,19-33 (CJB)

²⁵ Adonai is good to those waiting for him,
to those who are seeking him out.
²⁶ It is good to wait patiently
for the saving help of Adonai.

²⁷ It is good for a man
to bear the yoke from his youth.
²⁸ Let him sit alone in silence
when he has laid it on him.
²⁹ Let him submit absolutely;
there may yet be hope.
³⁰ Let him offer his cheek to the one who strikes it,
and receive his fill of insults.

1 Peter 1:10-20 (CJB)

¹³ Therefore, get your minds ready for work, keep yourselves under control, and fix your hopes fully on the gift you will receive when Yeshua the Messiah is revealed.

John 13:36-38 (CJB)

³⁸ Yeshua answered, “You will lay down your life for me? Yes, indeed! I tell you, before the rooster crows you will disown me three times.

My most literal rendition of the psalm, that preserves the parallelism.

“On you I was flung from the womb; from my mother’s belly my God has been you.”

Resonances:

Thrown (flung)— I thought of the phrase ‘I throw myself on the mercy of the court’. What’s the difference between me flinging myself, as opposed to someone else doing the flinging?

Waiting for him— Echoes of Maggie Ross: “Waiting” and “Beholding.”

Sit alone in silence— “For you alone my soul in silence waits.” Who’s alone, me or God?

Submit absolutely— there may yet be hope. “Assent.” “Accept.” “Abide.” What does the syntax tell me? To hope for hope. Is it even possible to hope for hope? One’s a verb, and one’s a noun, but that doesn’t really affect the absurdity of it. If I’m so busy hoping for hope, that I don’t notice that what I’m actually doing is hoping, then I might as well hang up my Zen hat and go make the bed and wash the dishes.

Therefore, get your minds ready for work— My priest friend counseling me to figure out what my job is, and then do it. This was his recommended method for me to deal with my fear, by remembering how I dealt with it when I was a cop. Ask myself, “What’s my job? Just figure it out, and then say to myself— “Do your job!”

Yes, indeed! — I hear that quote as if it were more along the lines of, “Oh, really? You think so, do you?”

Disown— Oh, yeah! It occurred to me to work backwards from the tears and sobbing, to the cause of them. What if the thing which broke my heart so was the sudden realization that I had denied knowing Christ? What if my misery is, in and of itself, the state of disowning God? Oh, Ouch!

I think I have to remember that this is Good Friday and so doom and gloom is sort of unavoidable?

Yeah, I think I’ll work on remembering that, and also remembering me wriggling my toes under the water last night as Pastor Mary washed my feet.

And now I’ll take my hopeless hopefulness off and get dressed and make my bed.

May we be flung,

squealing,

from the belly of the empty tomb;

high and far,

and land exactly where we were meant to.