Ps. 90 (a moment's pause)

Before we launch into the next verse I want to pause over something that has been lurking in the back of my mind but didn’t come into expression until after yesterday’s reflection. It is this: I have a suspicion that man is prone to separating the spheres of ‘creation’ and ‘morality’ in such a way that ‘creation’ is perceived as being the more powerful or dominant mode of expression of divine power. For example, in the mythologies that I am aware of, rarely, if ever, are the currently ruling gods also the gods that initiated (or, constructed) creation. Rather, the current gods, in the long-distant mythic past, overthrew the gods that actually fashioned the world (if, that is, the world was ever ‘fashioned’ and not simply ‘there’). Now, the current gods do ‘harness’ or ‘express’ creation, but they are not its fashioners. Instead, creation itself is simply the ‘stage’ on which both humans and gods perform. The gods are, in a sense, just as ‘contained’ within creation as humans (although, they do not die like humans). They may have the power of creation at their disposal but they are not creators. 

This seems important. The ‘will(s)’ that established creation (the older gods) are no longer the ones that govern. In other words, creation and the ‘will of the gods’ is not simultaneous. This leads, in some way I believe, to a disconnect between the ‘service to the gods’ (cult, or liturgy) and ‘morality’. I can’t right now explore that issue as my focus is elsewhere. What I want to admit is this: that for me, no matter how much I affirm that Yhwh is both creator and king (he unites what myth separates), it is his power as creator that is the more awe-inspiring in concrete terms. So, when yesterday’s reflection led to the conclusion that the same power that was heralded in verses 1-5 is now intensified in verses 7-12 (where Yhwh turns his gaze to man’s sins), I have to admit that I do not naturally think this way at all. The idea that creation and morality express a single will is something I simply have a difficult time inhabiting; I understand it; I have a hard time inhabiting it. My ‘being’ operates much more along the lines expressed in myth, where the ‘will of creation’ and the ‘rulership over that creation’ are divided. Further, the overwhelming display of authority and power, as expressed in creation, seems to dwarf the display of authority and power that pertains to a moral life. This is something the Scriptures accomplish that I find utterly remarkable and utterly difficult to get ‘into’. When they assigned to Yhwh both ‘creation and Torah’ and saw in both the expression of a single will, they seemed to create a lighting bolt of sorts in and to the world of myth. At the same moment that it utterly dissected the myths around them it united two realms that until then were very separate. 

And, it was when they became completely united that, it seems to me, we would find ‘man’ as the true expression and image of Yhwh, for it is only in man that both ‘creation and morality’ are united. In other words, the saint is greatest expression of Yhwh; even more so that a super-nova. This of course creates a rather blinding light (to me) on the Genesis account, where Adam stands at the pinnacle of creation, and is its sovereign king. But again, my problem is not in understand this; it is in ‘inhabiting it’ or ‘living it’ or actually ‘seeing it’. Which is perhaps my own fault. But, I suspect my fault-line runs much deeper than my own.