Everything and Ourselves
In a thrilling commentary on Psalm 139, printed in TRO #281, titled "Everything and Ourselves," Eli Siegel discussed this beloved psalm verse by verse. He said it could "accurately be called Everything Has Made Us."
And he continued: "It is clear that in everything we do, there is some cause besides ourselves. Can we spread out our toes just by ourselves, without the help of something outside? Bones and muscles are ourselves and not ourselves. If, then, the movement of our toes is caused by something besides ourselves, can the world be seen as present in what the psalm calls 'my downsitting and mine uprising?' What enables us to stand up or sit down? What enables us to run a block or cross the street?"
These great opposites of self and world--of ourselves and of what Matthew Arnold has called "the Eternal Not Ourselves, in us and not in us, which makes for righteousness"--are at the very heart of religion, as Psalm 139 shows and Eli Siegel so magnificently explained.
And he continued: "It is clear that in everything we do, there is some cause besides ourselves. Can we spread out our toes just by ourselves, without the help of something outside? Bones and muscles are ourselves and not ourselves. If, then, the movement of our toes is caused by something besides ourselves, can the world be seen as present in what the psalm calls 'my downsitting and mine uprising?' What enables us to stand up or sit down? What enables us to run a block or cross the street?"
These great opposites of self and world--of ourselves and of what Matthew Arnold has called "the Eternal Not Ourselves, in us and not in us, which makes for righteousness"--are at the very heart of religion, as Psalm 139 shows and Eli Siegel so magnificently explained.
posted by Rev. Wayne Jack Plumstead | Saturday, September 24, 2005
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