The Insight Statutes

It was not at first realized that A Poetical Reading of the Psalms of David 1-41, written in 1985, must stand on its own without revision. What was to have been a revision has to hence be retitled, for it has become something else, although it derives from the Poetical Reading, it does not follow it. The consideration of Psalm 4 is an example, which only references the psalm in lying down to sleep. Likewise Psalm 1 has become a much deeper inquiry. The meditation must follow where it will.

 In such observations as the botanical humanity of Psalm 1 and the dialogue of Psalm 16 in heaven before the world began, dialogues begun as early as Psalm 2, the speech is David's, but the voices in his are a kind of forewriting, like the fore edge paintings on some books. Psalm 2 is opposite Psalm 1,  the rebel against the righteous revealed in the natural. These together prefigure the whole of the human position. The dialogue of Psalm 16 is embedded in the text, not set apart by paragraphs or quotes. In similar fashion Psalm 8 embeds the cosmos as a human domain in a simple metaphor of the hand.  The implied landscape of the traditional order of Psalms in the 20's and 30's suggests a topography of inner terrain where, like the mountains and valleys of Pilgrims Progress where Christian walks seeking the Promise, in a guise of David in his extremities, Messiah walks foregrounding the corporate person of every man and woman. It helps to have a plateau surrounded by mountains when we leave the valley below.  Such things are either so big they can't be seen or so small they elude the ear.

Insight Statutes

This understanding of the natural in the Psalms stems from having them read aloud in a two room public schoolhouse. Students would read from the front of the class at the beginning of the day such things as Lift up your heads O ye gates! A Poetical Reading  is like a hummingbird that drinks from a hose, a listening, as Isaiah says, that seeks the wakening of "my ears to listen as one being taught." Such matter makes the Psalmist declare, I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate upon your statutes (119.99), a revelation in words that is not words, more insight than all my teachers because you have exalted above all things your word and your name (138.2). These word shells transport to understanding more extraordinary than ever can be said in this extraordinary world.