At the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, the Opus Dei, Work of God, in each of the eight prayer periods is to sing and recite the Psalms, over and over again. Much of the strangeness of these “dark sprouts and black flowers” (N. Fisher) resists even the most strenuous and imaginative attempts to perceive the workings of the Holy Ghost or figurations of the Christ in them. There’s no way around the stark violence Psalm 137:
“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”
However, the darker river that runs through the Psalms has worked well for my own Jonesian interpretation regarding the almost axiomatic presence of violence in and around the sacred. Over the years, when I have been at the Monastery, I silently continued to build my own counter-theology and radical ontology of the Psalms and Christianity in general. So much so, that I often felt a sense of blasphemous transgression at the divine offices, as if I was a wolf, with Jesus’ blood staining my teeth, praying amongst the herd of peaceful grazing sheep. All self-inflation aside, I am less and less inclined to pray at the Monastery, preferring to perform my religion in the shadows of the Chama canyon amidst the whitening bones of god, accompanied by the wandering ghosts of slaughtered ancient peoples, haunted by the vengeful Brujas and the screams of crucified Penitentes.
Relevant to the work on Jones, I was studying Psalm 130. It is most remembered for its plaintive first line, “Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord.” KJV
I was reading a commentary by Steiner in Grammars of Creation that indicated the Hebrew could actually be translated as, “From the depths of the Abyss, in which You are, I call on You.” With regard to God’s withdrawal from the the world, the presence of an awe-full absence, and Jones’ lifelong pursuit of the Fugitive Gods, this caught my attention.
So using this as a first line, I chose to make my own, well, a Charles Jones style, translation of Psalm 130. I also relied upon the standards, KJV, NIV, ESV and renderings by Robert Alter and Stephen Mitchell. There is a remarkable semantic tension between the various translations regarding this particular Psalm. My own rendering is born out of this. There is a pressing desire to learn Hebrew. Perhaps after I learn Sanskrit. Always, there is never enough time.
There are few notes that follow.
Psalm 130
The red ribbon of blood striving ever upwards:
1 From the depths of the Abyss, in which You are, I call on You.
2 Entwined Immanence, hear my voice.
may Your mind in-gather and hold the song of my saying.
3 Were You, O Embedded Immanence, to attend to forgetting,
O Being, who amongst us could endure?
4 For the forgiveness is Yours,
so that You may be revered.
5 I hope for the Presence of You, my being hopes,
and for Your Word I wait.
6 My being for Your Presence—
more than the watchmen wait for the dawn,
more than the watchmen wait for the dawn.
7 Wait, O Sacred State, for this Shuddering Immanence,
for within this Luminous Presence there is mercy,
and a plentiful plenitude of redemption.
8 And all manner of things will be redeemed,
and all manner of thing will forgiven,
and all shall be be forgotten,
as we shall all be entwined again into the One.
***
Red ribbon - Saviors of God - Kazantzakis
From the Depths - Grammars of Creation - Steiner
In-gather and hold - Question Concerning Technology - Heidegger
Could endure - Dur Desir De Durer - Eluard
My being for Your Presence - Being and Time - Heidegger
All manner of thing - Julian of Norwich, Eliot, Four Quartets
***
Psalm 130 KJV
A song of ascent
1 Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.
2 Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
3 If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
6 My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.
7 Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
8 And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
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