The Real World

Inspired by Psalm 139:1-6
Psalm 139: 1-6 is one of the first scriptures I have read as being complete without explanation. To add anything risks ruining something perfectly simple, something succinctly pure.

Psalm 139:1-6 is a passage waiting for us, tucked in, and cozied up deep into the psalms. A sleeping giant offering a literary blanket to residents in a frigid world. Words holding a lifetime supply of awesome wonder:
How is it possible to be so known, so seen, so understood and so loved and yet, still feel so lost?  

This illusive, collective destiny of unconditional love and belonging cements itself in Psalm 139: 1-6. An oracle of inclusion ready to be accessed over and over again, each time voiced with a new inflection to address the state of our soul and our placement in the world.

It helps if passengers board without baggage. Psalm 139:1-6 is no occasion for historical criticism or scientific review. It requires no strength training for wrestling in using egoic strength or intellectual wit. Psalm 139:1-6 is a passage best served raw and absent of seasoning, salt, or spice. These words are written for you, and for me, and for anyone who is lucky enough to stumble across its presence and surrender to its purpose.

So, listen and tell me, ‘What does the passage say?”
Try to hold the words lightly. Give them room to breathe. Walk with them. Rest in them. Drift to sleep in their arms and dream them into being.

Come here and I will whisper in your ear what it is I hear:
“I was made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”
Over and over again.

This is a song that settles in my head, drips its way to my heart like heavy, sweet molasses. This is the vision that wakes me to the world. The. Real. World. The Real World that Psalm 139: 1-6 is designed to communicate. To all of us in different ways Psalm 139: 1-6 says, “Listen Here. Remember. This is the Real World.”

I have been noticing that we spend a lot of time in imaginary worlds.
Worlds defined by geographical borders, economic projections, and institutional systems. Powerful creations that dictate who we are and who we are not. Invisible worlds that design and destroy us and still never leave us behind. A cult-like infrastructure sticking like gum in our hair demanding all our attention, frustration, and problem-solving skills. It sticks with us and we stick with it. All of it. We argue with it and scream at it and weep over it. We obsess over it and read about it and create with it. It consumes us just as we consume it. These humancentric worlds we have shaped from ego and desire.

‘It’ is not the Real World. This is hard to remember and easy to forget.

I can tell we remember the Real World because we are so angry all the time at everyone and everything. I think somewhere, somehow in our souls we know we did not get any of this right. That in all this wrongness, we are not right. Voluntary prisoners of an uncomfortable existence taunting us with unending scenes where anything happening is a conspiracy to inconvenience, irritate, and infuriate us. We are triggered, offended, traumatized. It is exhausting to be moving constantly when you are getting nowhere but going everywhere because everything requires a reaction. Right. Now. Or. Else.

Psalm 139: 1-6 storms in like an angry mother with raised eyebrows and serious, wide eyes to say, “Or. Else. Nothing.” She has the higher hand in the game we play and lays her cards flat with an expression that says, “Now what, smartypants? Sit down.”

Psalm 139: 1-6 shushes us and mutters under her hot breath that, in the Real World, nothing is the best-case scenario.

“Nothing,” she says, “means that we shut up and sat still long enough to hear that wherever we are trying to go, whoever we are trying to be, whatever we are trying to do…is inconsequential to the reality that the world is perfectly complete at this moment and that we are part of that perfect completeness.”

“Nothing,” she says, “indicates that the reactionary worlds we have created are momentarily muted, presumably paused, perhaps by an accident of thoughtfulness.

“Nothing,” she says, “indicates a holy interruption, a Christological Conspiracy, manifest in a miraculous moment of mindfulness.”

The sight of bird.
The sound of a sigh.
The smell of pine.
The warm kiss of the sun.

Nothing orchestrates a collision of worlds built in different directions.

Which, we all now know, Psalm 139 believes makes little to no sense. The construction of such violent, divisive, destructive worlds with the materials which formed our very being. Concrete worlds dreamt up in an Amazon forest. Narcissistic imaginers “made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth” dream up a plan for ripping apart the place of their birth to sell off the pieces for something defined as profit for industrial growth.

Psalm 139 says, “Look, I know who you are so what the heck do you think you are you doing?”

Psalm 139: 1-6 sits us down, looks us straight in the eye and reminds us of eternal truths we habitually forget. That we are known and seen. That we are loved and belong. That we matter so we better act like we matter and remember that this also means that everyone else matters too and she is “notjust talking about the other humans because every created part of life matters just as much as you!”

*I imagine her being very serious with all of us about this last part. 

For whatever reason, these are not easy truths to swallow. I think this might have something to do with why we are all so angry, so sad, so lonely, so lost… so often. We remember who we are, and we know that we are better than these worlds we have brought into being. All the shelters of political parties, national citizenship, and economic security crumble in the storms of our own making. All the systems and institutions unravel in the subtext of our psyches and, consciously or unconsciously, we long to return home. To the Real World. The world pulsing and pushing and pulling just beneath our feet in the dirt of our birth.

I think I would ask Psalm 139: 1-6, if she thought we could be re-made…in secret…in the depth of the earth…like before? …If we returned to the silt in the soil and the shade of the tree. If we just kept showing up with empty hands to re-member the secret truths with which we were birthed.

I would ask her (assuming she had said a re-making was possible) if she thought this re-making meant we might be able to smell the muddy hands of the earth that first held us? Or feel the breeze of the breath that gifted us life? Or hear again the languages of the millions of voices that encouraged us to open our eyes, stretch our limbs, and take that first step?

I would ask her what worlds she thinks we would weave if we could commit to this ritual of repeatedly re-membering of our true placement in this Real World. The world without borders or boundaries, without progress or profit. The only world where we are seen and known and loved and held as long as it takes to hear a voice reminding us who we are and where we belong.