LIKE A WEANED CHILD
Psalm 131
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time on and for evermore. (NRSV)
This was the passage my wife selected to do “Group lectio divina” the other day. My wife in her trademark calming and quieting tone shared with us to pay attention to our affect. Too often, we “think” about the passage. Rarely do we pay attention to our affect, she shared.
Contrary to David’s song of ascent, I have lived most of my life chasing after great and marvelous things. William Carey’s charge of “expect great things from God and attempt great things for God” dominated my life’s purpose and relentless drive. Having pursued what I deemed to be great and marvelous things for decades, my one-year sabbatical forced a slowdown (shutdown may be more accurate) especially since our sabbatical coincided with COVID against my desire for some activity.
It was mostly during this shutdown that I embraced and learned how to calm and quiet my soul. I should say even before calming and quieting my soul, I had to first recognize and honor the soul in me, as God’s image bearer. For too long, I have operated as if my soul did not exist or did not matter. What were great and marvelous things precluded my soul. The mystery of Christ in me and I in Christ was thought to be understood and I needed to get busy with my life pursuing after great and marvelous things.
Calming and quieting my soul required deep and deeper listening to my soul. Though the process of getting to know my soul started years earlier, I was still wrapped in an inordinate amount of action, performance, and recognition. By the time I entered my sabbatical, I no longer had titles or roles attached to me for which I thanked God probably first time in my life. Listening to my soul was a tricky business mainly because I had to provide a safe space for my own soul. Self-condemning and self-hatred offer no help or assistance for the soul to appear. Though I had to be honest and transparent with my soul and my life’s history, I learn to hold my soul with self-compassion and self-acceptance. A “sinner” part of me criticizing my soul may go too far in damaging my sainthood while a “saint” part of me celebrating my soul too much may boost my “sinner” or ego’s pride in me. I have been learning how to hold both the gift of sainthood, which is Christ in me, in me as well as the humility of a sinner.
Over time, it was not the external “I”, but the internal “I’ (my soul) slowly began to take over, ever so shyly and unassumingly, deciphering and navigating toward what it wants and desires (probably what it always has wanted and desired). Included in that process of my soul taking over was the process of shedding and letting things go—pursuing after what others and missions enterprise prescribed as “great and marvelous” things. I recognize that after the calming and quieting process, how we act as a result may very well lead to great and marvelous things. In this sense, the order in which how we engage and steward our soul becomes that much more critical.
I may finally be a “weaned child” at the ripe age of 60! While it is true that a weaned child has gained the first important step toward independence, a weaned child is still highly dependent on the caring mother. The child may walk and move about but would not know how to navigate life, how to eat, what to eat, how to clean, how to walk safely, how to stay safe, and other plethora of decisions in life. The focus of this particular image of a weaned child with its mother is just that—the necessary life-sustaining one-sided dependent relationship on the part of the weaned child to its mother.
Then there is verse 3 which starts out, “O Israel.” During our first reading, this word jumped out at me, “O Israel.” I viscerally equated “Israel” to “Korea” and even “Asia” almost immediately. I did not think or conjecture that to be reality. It simply came to me and i sat with it. “O Korea or Asia, hope in the Lord from this time on and for evermore.” Then I saw the progression and background of verses 1 and 2 in our second and third readings. I felt as if I was like a weaned child, maybe and just maybe for the first time in my life. Leaving Frontier Ventures after 35 years and our church two years earlier marked an era of finally being weaned from religious structures and affiliations, having pursued great and marvelous things.
At first, verse 3 felt like a huge leap or even an illogical disconnect from previous verses, from “I,” “me,” and “my” emphases to “Israel.” David in his genuine moment of poetic epiphany saw the connection between calming and quieting one’s soul (as opposed to not fixating on great and marvelous things) and being weaned and still being cared for by the caring Mother, he hoped that Israel would experience a similar spiritual (can I say?) breakthrough. If that is, I am fully on board in saying and desiring the same hope for Korea and Asia. At the same time, my role and responsibility are to continually experience like a perpetual weaned child that is connected to its caring Mother. So, I can project that same hope onto Korea, Asia, and the world.