Ps. 55.13-14 (betrayal and the birth of a dream)

But / it is you / one like myself
my companion / my close friend
together / we had sweet fellowship
as we walked
in the crowd / at the house of God. 

These lines feel similar to the dream portion of the psalm when the psalmist envisioned himself growing wings and flying from his troubles. The difference, of course, is that this is no dream but memory. There is another crucial difference: in the dream, the psalmist flies off alone; in memory, it is precisely companionship that lends these verses their endearing quality. The dream originates precisely as the counterpoint to this memory—it is the fact that he has suffered from the most traumatic form of evil (the invasion of friendly bonds), that his dream emerges as a solitary flight. And, whereas in the dream he is escaping all human bonds, here he remembers the most intimate form. Indeed, the opening line could not portray their friendship as closer: “one like myself”. (The psalmist sees this almost as an act of self-betrayal, an act of suicide.) The language of fellowship saturates every line. Furthermore, whereas the psalmist is escaping the city to the wilderness, here the fellowship takes place at the very heart of the city: in the Temple. The effect of all of this is rather profound: whereas the dream was aching in its impossibility, the reality is much more terrible. At the very heart of the city, within the very place where God dwells, the psalmist and his companion used to engage in ‘sweet fellowship’. Everything, in this memory, acts in concert and as it should: fellowship and the pilgrim crowd engaging in liturgy in the temple of God. In other psalms of remembrance, the same event occurs. There could be no higher experience of blessing than this. And yet, from this very heart, betrayal emerges. By originating from this place, everything becomes infected: the subsequent dream of escape will be an embodiment of the utter reversal of this memory (a solitary flight from the city and into the wilderness); and when the residue of the dream fades, total judgment will be called for. The center of his life could not, in this betrayal, be revealed to be more rotten. From this infected center arises dreams of its utter opposite and calls for judgment.