Ps 84.6 (pilgrim passing)

Those passing / through the Valley of Baca
will make it / an oasis;
moreover / the early rains / will clothe it with blessing. 

If what we said in our previous reflection is accurate then we now move into a second ‘layer’ of the Temple holiness and beauty. We indicated in the previous reflection that the psalm has been constructed in such a way as to place the ‘pilgrim state’ at its center. In so doing it has also revealed to us that the ‘pilgrim state’ and the ‘dwelling state’ are intimately related. The ‘dwelling state’ reaches out, sacramentally, beyond the walls of the Temple, creating a type of gravitational pull toward itself. In so far as the pilgrims were moving-toward the Temple their ‘state of pilgrimage’ participated the Temple’s beauty. If liturgy for the Temple-dwellers is the ‘drama of divine beauty’ then the pilgrim state itself participates in this drama in so far as it remains in-movement-toward that liturgy. 

That much we have seen. But what this impression creates is a sense that the ‘pilgrim state’ and its continuous ‘movement toward’ is one that is entirely anthropocentric; it isn’t cosmic. The ‘beauty of holiness’ is one which adheres only in the pilgrim. That, however, would run counter to our observation regarding the ‘birds’. As we saw there, the beauty of the Temple is a sacred, objective beauty. It is not one that resides only in the intellectual, subjective or ‘interior’ state. If birds can be objects of admiration due to their dwelling in the Temple, it is the objective sacred space (and time) of the Temple that is the object of admiration. In this verse, we gather together this observation and come to see that the pilgrims themselves function as types of ‘movable Temples’. They actually create the ‘state of blessedness’ enjoyed by the birds and Temple dwellers where they journey. This is deeply significant. The Temple creates ‘temple-states’ in the cosmos by and through her pilgrims. By participating in the blessedness of the Temple, they ‘make sacred’ the spaces through which they travel. That which can’t journey to the Temple can be made Temple-like through those who do journey. Furthermore, while the pilgrims ‘state’ is ‘movement-toward’, this cosmic redemption accomplished through the pilgrims is one which accomplishes rest and peace. The ‘Valley of Baca’ remains exactly where it is, but is now redeemed into Temple beauty and life. Its blessedness is not like the pilgrims—as a movement—but as a received blessing. It is key to see in this regard that the ‘Valley’ now, like the pilgrim and the Temple dwellers is “blessed”: it is “clothed in blessing”. 

A final significant point: the blessing communicated by the pilgrims to the Valley is a redemptive blessing. We must see here that the ‘Valley’ (representative in a way of the entire cosmos) coincides to a large extent with the ‘state of exile’ in its ‘wasting away’. Before the pilgrim arrives it is clearly in a state of torment or a type of dissolution. The pilgrim both brings it to its own stability and bestows on it the abundance and prodigality of ‘blessedness’.