Sublime Harps of Babylon: Part Deux
The second part to the last post I almost added on but that was way too damn long
One housekeeping note before I begin. I have had a few requests to add audio to these posts for those who like to listen instead of read. I added audio to the last post for practice after it had been sent out. Hopefully this will add to the experience for some. I am only using my laptop’s mic for now, so it is a real unofficially official part of the project. Anyway, you should see that link at the top of this post if you should want to listen instead of read.
While I was writing my last post about Sublime, refusing to leave our harps in trees, and generally feeling like an asshole for suggesting that anyone sent into exile after watching their children killed before their very eyes should or should not act a certain way, I was holding a piece of my thoughts for a follow-up post. While in that post I confessed that I am working on a larger gathering of thoughts on what we do in the face of the circumstances when God does not deliver us, this is not that. This is a thought that was clamoring to wriggle out of me more entirely during the last post. But, as I have promised numerous times with little to show for it, I am actually trying to shorten the majority of these posts for quicker reads. So adding further to the last part felt both disingenuous and it seemed as well that it would diminish where we were going with that one. Onward!
What is one of Psalm 137’s greatest gifts to us all these many years later as we still come to the Psalms? I believe it is the writer’s blunt honesty. There are many moments coming to the Bible where it can at times be a bit cumbersome as we wade through the beautiful poetry, stories, and letters—at least for me. Maybe it is not the Bible itself as much as about how people talk about the Bible. I suppose what I am trying to say is that it is extremely meaningful when I come to a text like Psalm 137 and see the reality of what is happening in someone’s heart. It is not some whitewashed version of a person displaying faith with a smile on their faces while their life is anything but serene. It is real. It is raw. It is a relief.
Do you even pray though?
I am not sure how you pray, if you pray at all—or how you think about God. Do you pray silently to yourself? Do you go somewhere private where you can pray aloud? Do you speak what is in your heart or convert all your thoughts into King James language first? If you journal do you write what you are actually thinking or curtail your words knowing that someday a spouse or child might find your spiritual meanderings? Maybe, and hopefully, you have all of this figured out, but I certainly do not. I wonder if public prayer, has in a way, clouded my own ability to come honestly to prayer on my own. I suppose, depending on which person I am referring to of course, that at times hearing others pray has been helpful, or least I think it has been. But at the end of the day, again if you are praying, we come to God alone for prayer. What does that look like for you?
Perhaps from the last paragraph you have more of a glimpse into my prayer life than I would like to offer. And yet the Psalmist of Psalm 137 has reminded me to try and keep it real. Not only that, but way beyond that, their words signal that is OK to bring everything that is inside of me to God in my prayers. Seriously, if you ever find yourself wondering how honest you can be with God, you can remind yourself that God has heard prayers where people asked that God would bless those who dashed the babies of their enemies onto rocks. I mean, unless you are really fucked up, surely your prayers are not going to usually approach such spaces. BUT even if they do, the Psalmist has paved a way for us all to see that expressing such pain and emotion to God is natural. Then the Jewish people thought the Psalm was worth keeping and sharing generation after generation. And then countless others have agreed. I am not usually one to say, “Well everyone else is doing it, so it’s OK,” but there does seem a lot of precedence, even beyond this Psalm of course, for being honest in your prayers and songs.
Do you even cuss when you pray?
I have to admit that as I wrote out the last question a part of me realized how rarely I pray honestly to God. Despite how much profanity I use while talking about God, I have not in the past used much profanity when talking to God. Sitting back in my chair to process that statement leaves me thinking two things: Why have I not been more honest, especially in my times of pain? And, God must think I am the biggest phony. God knows my thoughts and heart. So why pretty things up when the shit has hit the fan? Why, in moments of such distress, would I hesitate to lift my prayer to God as is, without first using spellcheck and hoping God will think it is a good prayer?
In 1997 Robert Duvall was in a movie called The Apostle. There are at least one or two scenes in the movie where his character is depicted angrily shouting to God in prayer. He had experienced a tumultuous turn of life events and he was not happy. I can recall watching this movie and being struck by the way he acts in the movie, it being so contrary to what I had seen played out before me in the lives of Christians. There was no room for violently shouting prayers while frothing from the mouth. If anyone else did this kind of thing they kept it to themselves. When the movie was over, I believe I thought something to the effect of, “That was some crazy shit. He was real, I’ll give him that.” Since then I have reflected back upon the movie more as it has rolled over in my subconscious the past few years. Besides a reactionary moment of violence on the character’s part in the film, I have overall come to greatly appreciate the notion in the film that not every person of faith should all look and behave in the exact same ways.
Thinking about that movie leads me to this question: What would your (whoever you want to put here: pastor, spouse, friend) think if they found your written prayer and it ended with “happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” Or in whatever words you were really thinking the last time you were actually hurting. I mean, you might just get the cops called on you.
Incapable of prayer
I can recall a moment from the past when I was in so much pain that I could not pray. Thinking of it now, I think the problem was simply that I had not given myself enough freedom to pray what was in my heart at that moment. I was terrified and my eyes were too blurry with tears for me to see that God was waiting for an honest prayer. Do not get me wrong, I do believe that God was with me and heard my inner most thoughts. I also know that my inability to pray held in my pain, as opposed to helping me process it. Perhaps my inauthentic manner in which I am accustomed to praying on a regular basis had not adequately prepared me for that moment. Perhaps I really had no words. Looking back though, I have a suspicion that if I had simply been more real in my prayers prior to that moment, that it would have been more instinctual to release all of my pain in prayer then—or at the very least have a more valid connection with God as I suffered. I wonder if that makes sense to anyone else?
When reading about the song Rivers of Babylon for the last post, there was speculation about what both versions of the song meant by their words. With a few slight changes to the Sublime version, there is the thought that the band was referencing issues with drug addiction. Most of us do not know the experience of being carried into exile by captors, thank goodness. But maybe something like drug addiction, or debt or a broken marriage or the death of a loved one or some other life event, is similar enough to leave you sitting on the shore of the rivers of Babylon wondering how you might ever find your way home. Have you ever found yourself in a space so far from home you just sat down and fucking wept?
In my next post I will discuss the theme of home some as I further explore the path Psalm 137 and the Rivers of Babylon have sent me down. For now I want to circle back to one of the greatest contributions the author(s) of Psalm 137 have given us all. Here we see a person, a group of people really, giving us the complete freedom to openly weep before God and everyone else. I am saying this again because this seems such a rare thing in the religious world as I have known it overall so far. To drive the point home I want to quote Rodney Dangerfield from the movie Back to School. Near the end of the movie he has to recite the poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas. The poem famously says a few times the words, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” You can read the whole thing online to get a good idea of what it says, and I fully recommend it, especially if you are unfamiliar with the poem. When his character is asked what the poem means to him he replies, “It means, I don’t take shit from no one.”
Do not pray gentle
Let us today finish our thoughts by coming to our faith with that kind of attitude. Filled with joy, rolling in the gutter, or somewhere in between—your faith is yours and yours alone. Be authentic in your faith and willing to express all of yourself before your God, or however you express yourself. Don’t take shit from no one. “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” I am not saying your prayers should be riddled with profanity necessarily, but they should be filled with your own voice, as you in that moment in the very least. Step back and wonder at how vast and magnificent God must really be. Perhaps we can bring all of who we are, even the rage or despair or violent tendencies, to such an entity, knowing they are a more full expression of our soul crying out before our Creator.
God can take it. Can you? Or maybe put a better way, can you take living the kind of life where you don’t shout a bit at God when the shit is going down? It’s mostly for us anyway right?
And if you get in trouble when you get to Heaven just blame me—and the author of Psalm 137. Or to quote George Costanza from Seinfeld, “Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon…” Well, on second thought, maybe don’t quote George.
I am leaving the lyrics to Rivers of Babylon, by the Melodians here at the bottom of the post. Click here for a youtube link if you would like to listen as well, or just go find it on whatever streaming service you use. And/or listen to the Sublime version. As you do, contemplate those who sat writing Psalm 137 on the shores of Babylon. Ask what they have to offer you, and maybe even, what you have to offer them.
By the rivers of Babylon,
Where he sat down,
And there he wept
When he remembered Zion.
Oh, the wicked carried us away in captivity,
Required from us a song,
How can we sing King Alpha's song
Inna strange land?
So, let the words of our mouth
And the meditations of our heart
Be acceptable in Thy sight.
Oh, verai!