On Tuesday I came home to find Ellis in a bad mood. Brooke made us dinner but Ellis cried at the table. She had skipped her afternoon nap, and each request of hers was a whine; when we asked her to use a polite voice, she cried. We ate, the slow and insistent grate of a whiny child making conversation sparse, making us grit our teeth and glance at the clock, wondering if it was too early to put her to bed.
After dinner, I suggested a movie. It was not a brave suggestion; it was an expedient one. Ellis climbed down from her chair and I turned on Annie, which has been the movie of choice for the past two months (did I mention she is 2?). She watched it for a few moments, and then began to whine again; I do not know what about.
Psalm 53 is an almost exact replica of Psalm 14, and one wonders how that slipped by the editors of the psalter. Or, perhaps we need to be reminded. It is the famous line that Paul refers to in Romans: the fool says in his heart there is no God. The psalmist, of course, ties such thought into action: their deeds are corrupt. Everyone is corrupt. The psalm lays out the human archetype, the sin nature or darkness or separation that we all experience, not only in our thoughts and feelings, but in our actions. The conclusion is not simply that no one says certain things in his or her heart; it is that no one seeks God. No one does good. They are all tied together: believing in God, seeking God, doing good. We try to separate them, and our churches often emphasize the inner workings of our emotions (at least in our songs, even if our pulpits have often moved beyond this), but the psalmist does not.
In verse 4, we see the great crime: men and women who do not call upon God. As C.S. Lewis put it, this is the great sin of pride from which all else stems. The biblical narrative (of which these song-poems are a part) is unequivocal: there is no morality apart from calling on God. Realizing our fallibility and need for help is central to living a moral life; realizing that we are not at the center of the universe is central to living a moral life.
I read today that some big stars (it was on the front page of Yahoo!) sometimes leave an autograph for a tip. While I do not know their motives, I see a society that worships people for their athletic prowess, their beauty, and these people cannot see that the world does not spin around them.
On Tuesday, I felt so frustrated with Ellis because we tried to meet her needs the best we could. We spoke softly and asked her to tell us what she needed. We turned on a movie. Still, she was cracking apart. We could not get her to see beyond the moment, beyond herself.
Except, I think of the drivers in traffic I have cut off or silently cursed because they did not move for me; I think of the times I feel short with people I love because they do not anticipate my emotions; I think of how many of my prayers are for comfort and ease. It is as though I don’t realize there is a world outside of myself, with people breathing and thinking and living besides me, and that the world does not wait and hang on my emotions or thoughts, and it will keep spinning despite whatever I do.
I think of how the church fought against Copernicus, and his realization that the earth is not at the center of the universe, and wonder whether those men weren’t more at fault for their anthropocentric view of the universe rather than their misunderstanding of science. We, simply, are not at the center. We are not made to be at the center.
On Tuesday, I was tired and wanted only to leave the room while Ellis whined. Instead, I got down on the floor and lay there. Ellis came to me and I tried–I did not know if it would work–I tried to play with her, to joke, to tickle. Slowly, she turned. With Annie playing in the background (but who cared?) we wrestled and laughed and blew raspberries on each other and took turns hiding and threw a ball back and forth. For a moment, while men and women ate dinner, and a mother gave birth, a child was tucked in, someone was diagnosed with cancer, someone else celebrated a birthday, while some cried and some sang and some prayed, we played on the rug in the center of our small living room and the earth spun without our help, and I put Ellis to bed later that night and we prayed then, but had been praying all evening, calling on God to take away the tremendous demands of ourselves.
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