When prayer becomes coming out (Psalm 138.1-24)
Return* by Mariella Colosimo of the enclosure of biblical reflection of WORD… AND WORDS group** of 15 October 2024
Psalm 138 helps us to look at with the eyes of the Lord all we live and hear, what we are grateful to life and what we are afraid of.
It is a central song in my life and in that of my daughter, it was she who made me listen to the song with the words of this psalm for the first time, and those verses I came back with my mind and with my heart in an important step, that of her coming out: "You woven me in the breast of my mother. I praise you, because you made me like a prodigy".
This verse has a particular resonance on me. Cards, embroider: who embroidered knows what attention we want in detail, what to take turns of colorful threads to achieve the result. The fabrics, the embroidery are detailed, precise, beautiful. It is as if God had embroidered and colored us with patience, carefully in the womb, until they do everyone and each of us a prodigy. When I play it, I refer him to her: if God did it as a prodigy will take care of it. And he takes me a profound feeling of joy and wonder. I can rely on God on the path we have in front of us, still uncertain and tiring.
Unfortunately, it is not always the case. Many people do not live like a prodigy, indeed they painfully express the refusal of themselves: "I would kill myself for what they are", you get to affirm bitterly. This psalm pushes us, as parents, in the direction of recognizing our children in their deepest essence, woven by the Lord as a prodigy since the womb.
And still that verse: "You made me like a prodigy" evokes an experience of daily life. We surprised us the unexpected harmony between what we parents have heard and the one who perceived our son in the beatification ceremony of Carlo Acutis where this psalm was sung. We felt deeply struck by the history of the young fifteen year old who died of a fulminating leukemia, his spiritual journey, his extraordinary ability to help others, which were the poor, the migrants, the boys in the sights of bullies, or elderly people in difficulty.
"All my ways are known to you", this verse resonates me in moments of loss, disorientation, when I don't know where I am going, in the face of the changes that imposes life with the advance of time. I do not always rely completely to the Lord. To think that he knows all my ways, even when I seem to have lost my compass, reassures me. It's as if I felt repeated: "Go, don't fear, I'm with you".
"Behind and in front you surround me and place your hand on me. Wonderful for me your wisdom, too high, and I don't understand it." We do not always understand the plans of God and the sense of suffering, but sometimes it is precisely in the difficulty and pain that I live its presence, its light that illuminates my steps. Even when I run away, the Lord is there. If in the last verses the psalm speaks of hatred: “I don't hate, perhaps, Lord, those who hate you
And don't you hate your enemies? " Then he closes with the request to God to guide us on the way of life.
"Everything was written in your book; my days were set." I feel discomfort in the face of these words. This God who knows everything about everyone and for each has already set his fate does not make me sympathetic. I feel in tune with another image of God: that of a God who leaves each free to build their own destiny. A true freedom, therefore, that the Lord leaves us, this is not a deception: to make us think we are free, when instead it is he who has the compass in hand to give us the direction.
One response to this seems to me to have found it. God knows and reads in the future, but leaves us free in our existence to find the way we want to follow. He knows her but we are the one to build it in our freedom to choose.
"You know when I hang and when I get up" ... and I go to my moments of great certainties and enthusiasm and those in which I enter crisis, I am on the ground, firm, overwhelmed by the doubts and questions about my work. And the Lord awaits me and tends to me to get up: "Driving me on the way of life".
"You know when I hang." The words of the Psalm at this stage of my life in which fatigue prevails me to welcome the need for rest, respect for my times that the Lord shows, without ever abandoning myself. If God awaits me, I don't have to have the anxiety not to do it.
Even when we find ourselves in the darkness the Lord is there. "Not even the darkness for you are dark," we read in the psalm. Perhaps we are called to listen to the Lord in the darkest situations, indeed those situations can be sources of knowledge. God's experience can be done in the world of harmony and beauty, but also when we are disoriented and walk in the dark.
Those words: "If I go up to heaven, you are there, if I go down into the underworld, here you are ... not even the darkness for you are dark", they could evoke the image of a persecutory God, a sort of eye that looks at the human being obsessively and does not give him escape, even in the darkness.
How much road to get rid of the image of that god-playful from whose petrifying gaze you cannot hide! But that look to me more ... tells me about a God who scrutinizes you and knows you in depth, makes me think of that of a mother in front of her growing creature, whose conquests tries to lose anything.
I find this passage of the Psalm to another verse of the letter to the Jews (4:13): "There is no creature that can hide before God, but everything is naked and discovered in his eyes". Puting up naked before God and before him, is this the prayer?
A moment of transparency where the mask we wear to protect ourselves from ourselves and from others falls. An exercise of coming out, because the coming out - our sons and daughters tell us - begins by themselves, in saying what you want to hide also to yourself, before others.
Prayer as a moment that brings us closer to our sons and daughters, making us experience the courage and effort of coming out. And I would repeat that question of the disciples to Jesus: "Lord, teach us to pray".
"Not even the darkness for you are dark," says the psalm. The night becomes clear if there is a profound trust in the Lord. The coming out is as if it were a transition from darkness to light. I too, as a parent, have made coming out. I want my son and all LGBT people to be seen as children of God.
I feel the need to commit to accompanying others to open up to this reality, to give home to young people, to make them feel free to express themselves, serene in accepting to be what they are. So it seems to me to go in the direction that God has indicated us.
Psalm 138.1-24
To the chorus master. By Davide. Psalm.
Lord, you scrutinize me and you know me,
You know when I hang and when I get up.
I penetrate my thoughts from afar,
I scrutinize me when I walk and when to rest.
All my ways are known to you;
My word is not yet on the language
And you, Lord, already knows it all.
Behind and in front you surround me
and place your hand on me.
Gorgeous your wisdom for me,
Too high, and I don't understand it.
Where to go far from your spirit,
Where to escape from your presence?
If I go up to heaven, you are there,
If I go down into the underworld, here you are.
If I take the wings of the dawn
to live at the end of the sea,
your hand guides me there too
And my right grabs me.
If I say: «At least the darkness covers me
And around me it is the night »;
Not even the darkness for you are dark,
And the night is as clear as the day;
For you, darkness are like light.
It is you who created my bowels
And you woven me in my mother's breast.
I praise you, because you made me like a prodigy;
Your works are wonderful,
You know me to the end.
My bones were not hidden
When I was formed in the secret,
woven in the depths of the earth.
Still shapeless they saw my eyes
And everything was written in your book;
My days were set,
When one still did not exist.
How much deep for me your thoughts,
How great their number, O God;
If they count them, they are more than the sand,
If I think them finished, I'm still with you.
If God suppresses sinners!
Get away from me, bloodthirsty men.
They speak against you with deception:
against you they arise with fraud.
I don't hate, perhaps, Lord, those who hate you
And don't you hate your enemies?
I hate them with relentless hatred
As if they were my enemies.
Scruit me, God, and know my heart,
Try me and meet my thoughts:
See if I travel a way of lie
And guide me on the way of life.
*The return is a sort of report of what has been said during the meeting. As in a collage, significant fragments of the interventions of the individual participants, words and thoughts expressed by each and each one are placed together.
** WORD… AND WORDSIt is a Christian experiential meeting group for parents of LGBT people and LGBT parents from Rome. We meet to travel and trace the journey together towards an inclusive society and church, where nobody is put on the edge. We do it following in the footsteps of that Jesus of Nazareth, who, on the streets of Palestine, shared his life with the excluded and excluded of his time. We meet once a month, normally the first Friday, at 8 pm at a place adjacent to the church of Sant'Ignazio. Those who are interested can contact us in these contact details: Alessandra Bialetti 346 221 4143 - Alessandra.bialetti@gmail.com; DEA SANTONICO 338 629 8894 - Dea.santonico@gmail.com
