Chew on This



Psalm 1

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked

or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD and on his law he meditates day and night.

 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not

wither. Whatever he does prospers.

 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.

 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.

 

         In this psalm the blessed man is described as doing two basic tasks: delighting in the law of the Lord, about which I wrote yesterday, and meditating on the law of the Lord day and night. The word meditate has been given a bad reputation because of its use with regard to Eastern philosophies and religions, which tend to emphasize its use in emptying the mind. There's a good reason for this: the goal of Eastern religions tends to be to become one with nothingness, the elimination of the self.

        In Christian practice, meditation is not emptying the mind, it is filling it. This sort of meditation is often described as being like a cow chewing its cud. It chews, then swallows, then regurgitates and begins the process again. I don't tend to find that picture appealing. An improvement on that is the picture of a dog worrying a bone. The dog keeps returning to that bone and chews and licks until it has ever scrap of edible material, and sometimes the remaining bone in fragments. It's based on these images that I have been known to call  my walking meditation time "walk and chew." My favorite picture of meditation, however, is the gerbil wheel. When I meditate, I go around and around and around with the question or subject. I particularly look for the things that set off "now wait a minute" alarms in my head, and then I begin worrying at it, digging for the meat, looking at it from every possible angle many times, checking what others have said about it. For me, meditation is a form of heuristic learning. (Click here for more on "heuristic")  Sometimes meditation ends in mystery: we still don't have the answer. Sometimes, meditation ends in confirmation: we continue to think as we have. Sometimes (and this is the hope) meditation ends in epiphany: the Ah ha! moment, the "eureka" of having found the gold we sought.

     The question remains, however; why meditate on the law of the Lord day and night? Some might answer "because the Bible tells us to." Others might answer, "because that's the way to wisdom." Johannes Kepler, of the founders of the science of astronomy described science as "thinking God's thoughts after Him." For centuries, western science operated on the premise that a rational being created the universe, and because of that, the laws of the universe could be understood by rational people. ( Link to a site that provides more on the subject.) It was only by meditation on the natural law of the Lord that science came to be.

        Likewise, it was through meditation on the law of the Lord as revealed in Scripture that the foundations of our democratic society and law were established. One of the things that sometimes surprises me is the logical consistency between the natural law and the written (Scriptural) law. It shouldn't, but having been brought up in a society that doesn't often connect the two. Tomorrow, we'll take a little detour to explore this notion further.