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This repose, writes Walter Brueggemann (Message of the Psalms), is not an abdication nor resignation; rather, the Psalm presents the recognition of how life with God is. The Psalm links this receptive posture with intentional choice. A designed life practice is needed to enact this self-oblation and nurture its continuance. Likewise, a posture of receptivity and being with is linked to the hope of the collective faith community. One cannot, apart from an organic relating with faith community, live the contemplative life or practice this surrender to Grace. In Christian terms, even when one is alone in Prayer, the person is still acting as one member of the mystical Body of Christ. Thus, this experience of calm, as seen in the Psalm, will lead into prayer for the larger faith community and seeing the possibilities for its sustenance in hope.
Brueggemann, rightly, affirms that this Psalm is a theological affirmation about the correct ordering of life. Therefore, such ordering of life is not about being spiritual as opposed to being otherwise, or being religious as contrasted with being secular. The Psalm presents the normal state of faithful, dignified humanness. The dignity of the human is discovered in a right ordering of life in relationship to God, regardless of the varied images of this Being that differ among persons and faith communities.
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The Psalm, then, presents a contrast between “creatureliness” and “autonomy.” The “faithful human creature … has no inclination for autonomy.” Also, the Psalm presents that this “glad, submissive reliance” is the antidote to anxiety. Thus, Brueggemann offers the contrast of this Psalm and the natural, spiritual law underlying it, to the drive toward autonomy within the modernist [and now Post Modern and Post Post Modern] ethos: Unless there is submission, there will be no hope, for autonomy and self-sufficiency are finally postures of hopelessness in which free gifts are excluded and one is left to one’s own resources.
We are part of a larger, dynamic, organic, and emergent Whole. This Whole, however we speak of it, is God. We are, in contrast to much modern sentiment, creatures of cosmic dependency. The only way to draw off, or be gifted with, the blessing, or the positive Energy of the Whole, is to remain in companionship and union with the Whole. Therefore, to do so is to benefit from the Whole, or God, even as God benefits from receiving the joy of partnership with the human in reciprocal affection and action. God, then, does not decide to bless some and withhold blessing from others, as though God is capricious. Rather, God is the All-Potential with a Nature to give totally and constantly of the Being God Is to all derived beings.
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