My Plenty, My Harvest / Psalm 53*

The madman said in his heart
           God is dead.
Earth shook! a trumpet blast, a bell's
           fiery throat

                      And God walks his world
           A guru in rags
lamp in hand, everywhere seeking
           one face of trust

Here, there, on this side and that,
           trembling, anticipant -
Where his light falls, eyes avert, shadows fret
           a congress in hell
a herd at the abbatoir, stupefied, sweating
           Not just one, not one!

The feast is set. A beggar at door
            lamp snuffed, pinchbeck face -
Clamor within; bones break, blood spills
           a cannibal feast

Faces malign, insolvent, grotesque. The beggar
           takes wing like a swallow
High on the wall a judgment appears
           "mene, teqel, parsan"
           -found wanting!
           - rejected!
           -replaced!

         Blood-gorged, they sink in a welter of blood.
                The bones of the just
arise, a wheat field serene

God walks in their midst
             "My myriad just ones
             my plenty, my harvest!

The Psalm speaks of a cannibal feast presided over by the great ones of this world. The menu: the body and blood of their victims.

If the imagery seems atrocious, let us meditate on verse 5 of the original psalm.

             Will all these evildoers never learn,
              they who eat up my people like bread,
              who refuse to call upon God?

As well as this scene from the book of Revelation, chapter 19:

And I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven, come, gather together for the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of officials, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and of those who sit upon them; the flesh of all, free and slave, small and great.

Where else does consumerism end, especially that consuming act par excellence, war, but the cannibalism?

And what sort of god do the warmakers cherish after all and desire with all their fleshly hearts, but a flesh-eating god? A god, that is to say, created in their own image, tongue to gullet to anus.

For this reason the nightmares of Revelation are exactly that: an unclouded mirror of our own voracious souls, a nightmare of appetites on the hoof, a will to make of the world and its people a hellish banquet, an ultimate anti-eucharist at which the honored guest will be the anti-Christ - violent, self-honored, self-damned, ourselves.

The nightmares of scripture are our most secret, guarded, cherished dreams turned inside out, taken up by God, and tossed back at us: fast food for the damned.

Do we quail, do we ask in hurt wonderment, what kind of God would speak like that, act like that? Let us consult our own heart for answer, the dark demons infesting us, the urges that assume the force of commands, the gods enthroned there, sinister, in control.

With this for prelude, the imagery of the psalm seems, if anything, rather subdued. God walks the earth, a Greek patriarch, a wandering Jew, a Russian holy man, in search of justice. He comes to a princely home where an unholy banquet is in progress. The imagery of the handwriting on the wall is derived from the book of Daniel, chapter 5. The crime mentioned in Daniel is a double one: idolatry and theft of the holy vessels. In the psalm, in line with Revelation, the crime is cannibalism. I see no great difference. In any case, the punishment is too close for comfort: the end of our era, our lives weighed and found wanting, our kingdom divided.

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*Psalm 53 as penned by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, followed by a reflection. This piece is taken from his book, "Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms," ps. 38-40.

My comment: I think Father Daniel Berrigan hits the nail on its head through his uncommon Psalm and uncommon Meditation, which applies quite appropriately to what is happening to American society today (in the early part of the 21st century), as the new Republicanism (neoconservative) is slowly taking over the reigns of our democratic system, with its accompanying view of a distorted Keynesian politico-economic theory,  buttressed by the religious right, and refashioning it to the point this government is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's a government governed not by our elected representatives, but by those new kingmakers called neoconservatives, I call them the face of greed (thanks to the U.S. Supreme for deciding in favor of Citizens United, which is a powerful lobbying coalition of monied individuals and  multinational corporations). They sound democrat when they need bailout money, but once they recover, they turn Republicans, new Republicans that is, neoconservatives. It's true, they are they, and they are us, some of us, I believe.  And Daniel Berrigan could be turning in his grave today. Is he worried? But I guess he's grinning. "I told you so!" he must be saying.