https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=C1hjy5bxHNo
The feature of the Psalms, I think that’s also interesting, is that the word soul comes up a lot. And so this is the Hebrew word nefesh, which has a lot of different meanings. Nefesh can actually refer to your throat or your neck. So when I think it’s Psalm 69, the waters have come up to my nefesh, probably means the waters have come up to my neck, you know, they’re high. But the word occurs in a lot of different places in the Psalms. And I think in other places, you know, it has kind of there’s something else going on with this word, in other words, what I’m saying. So when the soul is mentioned, it’s the soul is always interested in doing particular things. And the soul above all, is always interested in connecting with God, right? To you, oh Lord, I lift up my soul as the deer pants for the flowing stream. So my pants, my soul for you, oh God, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. For God alone, my soul waits in silence, for him comes my salvation. Oh God, you are my God, earnestly, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you, which is not the same as saying, earnestly, I see, you know, I thirst for you, right? I wait in silence. It’s, you could argue grammatically that maybe some, that’s basically what it amounts to, but I do think the language is important here. And one of my former teachers, James Kugel, who’s like, you know, really knows this, the biblical poetry world very well. He had this funny term for the soul in the Psalms. He said the Psalms is a kind of double agent. In the Psalms, the soul is this sort of thing that’s in you that belongs to you, but God put it there and it belongs to God. So it’s ultimately loyal to God. And it’s this part of you that’s loyal to God and is only kind of happy, let’s say, when in contact with God, right? So you can kind of be at odds with yourself in the sense that your soul, which longs to be in contact with God, isn’t, you know, the things you’re doing, it isn’t, you know what I mean? Like the things that we do. And so you have this sort of paradox where the part of you that you consider to be like most interior, your soul, is actually only at rest, only at peace, only fulfilled when it goes beyond the boundary of the self to God. So we definitely don’t want a buffer that’s impenetrable, right? The soul needs to move beyond that buffer to God. And like, the more porous that is, the easier it is for the soul to come to God. And back again, the more integrated the person, right? So you also have these other verses in the Psalms where the psalmist addresses his soul. Why are you downcast? Oh, my soul. Why are you in turmoil within me? Bless the Lord, oh, my soul, all that is within me. Return, oh, my soul to your rest, for the Lord is dealt bountifully with you. And so you have this phenomenon of like talking to your soul, not just like speaking, but like talking to it. You know, and I think this is different from when we talk to ourselves, you know, where we’re just kind of verbalizing, talking to one’s soul is to kind of face up to a part of you like that is you, but again, like not completely because it belongs to God. So you’re facing up to a part of you that is loyal to God that will not rest until it sees God. Like just going back to subjectivity for a minute, like I think that is something we experience is sort of this being at odds with the self, you know, being unhappy, being fragmented, being conflicted, let’s say, and I don’t know, I think sometimes we don’t, we kind of misdiagnose it, you know, we’re like, Oh, I’m just bored. I’m just unhappy. I’m just restless. I’m just sort of dissatisfied. And it could be that the conflict that’s making you unhappy has to do with this, you know, this soul that rests in God and all of us who, you know, seize on various distractions in the world and prevent that from happening. So I don’t know. I know. Do you think there’s a connection between this term and the way that the, say, the Orthodox fathers talk about the noose, for example? Yeah, I do. I do. So yeah, noose isn’t normally, you know, a translation of Nefesh, but I, but I, it’s like, as I was thinking about it, it reminded me a lot about noose language and like the part of us that can perceive and apprehend and relate to God and wants to, is continually wanting to. So like there’s this core feature of the self that, you know, we in modern life, right, in the confines of the buffered self tend not to even acknowledge. And I think this is where a lot of our own kind of unhappiness comes from. Yeah. And there’s also a way in which, you know, this idea of the soul for people, or this idea of the way you describe this category, which is like in between, in the sense that it’s the hook between, it’s the place where God and you connect, you could say, right? The top of the mountain, like however you want to describe it, you know, the Holy of Holies, there are many, there are different reflection of that, of that place or that reality in scripture from the individual, but then also, you know, when Moses goes to the top of the mountain and then in that, in that place is where he receives, you know, the glory of God and the same thing in the tabernacle, you know, in this whole, this place in St. Gregory of Nyssa really seems to join all of these together and say, basically they’re just the images of the same thing at different levels of reality. But it’s also, I think that for secular people listening to this, this is actually a necessary aspect of how reality works. That is, for things to exist, they necessarily have to have an aspect of their existence, which transcends it, which links it to higher participations, right? This is, this is absolutely necessary for anything to exist. And so you can’t, you can’t find the purpose of things in the thing. It’s always, it’s always kind of in between, in between the thing itself and its telos, you could say. And so the fact that this exists for a cop or for anything is, is just, it’s just how it works. And so the, the notion that we have that should not surprise people. Like it should not surprise people that humans also have an aspect of themselves, which has to necessarily transcend their multiplicity. Like this, this, this connector for us to be able to exist with each other, but then also for us to be able to exist towards that which is above us. And in this case, of course, we’re talking about the very source of reality itself, right? The, the God of love. So, so I think that it’s not a, it’s something which can be posited almost technically for people, you know, and that the, the, the imageistic language need not make you think that this is some kind of magical floating, you know, this is how people sadly imagine the soul, like, right. It’s like, where is the soul as if it’s a physical, physical thing where this is not what we’re talking about here. No, it’s, it’s, it’s so I, there’s a kind of paradox there, right? It’s sort of you, if you, if you enclose the object, enclose the thing in such a way that it has to kind of be a kind of thing unto itself in whose with, with a kind of inherent meaning, right? Not only as you lose the meaning, you lose the object. So, and yeah, and so like, I think the Psalms kind of with this continual opening of the cell is, it’s just, it’s, it’s actually not a kind of escape from subjectivity, but a kind of fulfillment of it, a kind of like joining it with the world, adjoining it with God, adjoining it with reality that makes the self not diminished, but like embedded and thereby kind of enhanced and more real. And if you understand that it that way, then what you talked about at the beginning makes so much sense when you said, you know, the, the, the mode of being, the mode of subjectivity is, is relationship. That is the mo, and so for that to happen, there has to be an aspect of me, which is calling out, which is almost like escaping my, my close self in order to be able to connect with God, to connect with others. This is, this is absolutely necessary. Yes. And, you know, I had to say, I’ve had some influence from, you know, existentialist thinkers in the past, you know, who kind of know that this is true, actually. They know that this is part of what it means to be like, they’re good phenomenologists. They know that this is how the mind works. But like for them, it’s good enough that you just posit it. It doesn’t really matter what’s on the other side. It’s like in the act of positing that you can get the same effect. But, but can you, but can you, I mean, is, or do you know that you posited it in a way that kind of undermines its ability to anchor you? And I think the psalmist is always coming up against God in a way that’s like, God is not manipulable. God is not yielding to him. You know, he’s saying, listen, listen, listen, help me up. But God is, is doing it on God’s terms, right? And so there’s a kind of like, now we can talk about objectivity in a certain sense. Like there’s a certain, you know, aspect to, to God that is like not you, it’s other than you. And so you cannot fake, there’s a kind of reality to that, that can’t, it can be like approximated maybe, but it can’t ultimately be, be, be reproduced. It can’t, you know, it can be counterfeited, but it can’t be, you know, it can’t be reproduced in some way. Yeah. Let’s just say in the ways that the people watching this will totally understand, you can’t completely just act as if God exists. Yes, exactly. As if is going to like, you know, it’s gonna, yeah, it’s gonna act. So, but that’s why, like I tell people that ultimately the Psalms are the good example, this is that ultimately worship is the key to this. Like worship, it’s like, it’s because worship places you in a mode where you’re interacting, where you’re acknowledging, where you’re placing yourself in relationship to this, this, to, to, to God. And then, and then that is the training, right? That’s the training ground, which helps you exist, you know, not just make it into a mental trick, but make it into something that you embody, that you participate in. No, I think that’s absolutely important. I think that’s, that is the kind of real thing, ultimately is worship, right? And, and, you know, I, I am, you know, I just, I just love how in the church, you know, it’s, it’s that, that kind of worship is so full. It’s, it’s, it’s how you stand, right? It’s where you’re looking, it’s what you’re seeing, iconographically, it’s what you’re hearing musically. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a kind of full bringing of the self into God’s presence and a learning to stand in God’s presence in a way that is, in a way, it’s sort of like teaching you, but in a way it’s, it’s, it’s also the thing itself. And so there’s a completeness to our experience as human beings in worship that isn’t available when we’re, you know, being consumers or we’re, you know, distracting ourselves in various ways. And it’s not, you know, I say this as like, not as like some great liturgical athlete, like, oh, I’m super, I’m like, no, I struggle. And it’s hard for me because of the ways that I’ve, you know, grown up in my own kind of mind, but, but I am grateful that everything is there in place to kind of, to prepare us, not to create the relevant, to prepare us to like experience it fully. So I do think liturgy and participation in services is kind of the main thing, but like when you’re not, you could be reading songs.