Psalm Magic or Practical Prayer

Psalm Magic or Practical Prayer?

Contractual Psalmic Prayer (?) Table of Contents Chapter I - Introduction Chapter II - Contractual Offer From the Prime Creator Chapter III - The Five Contractual Psalmic Prayers

The Good Sheperd – Psalm 23 The Secret Place – Psalm 91 Be Still – Psalm 46 Light and Salvation – Psalm 27 The Everlasting Gates – Psalm 24 Chapter IV - Epilogue

Chapter I - Introduction The following is an essay that addresses the fundamental issue of Evolutionary Emergence vs. Deterministic Deterministic Creationism of the cosmos, cosmos, as the backdrop backdrop of the more specific term of “contractual prayer”. Non-prayer and prayer are aligned and associated with both concepts and ideologies, respectively. Non-prayer is the posture of the present-day “seculars” “seculars” or “secular humanists”, who are the the descendants of yesteryear “agnostics” and “atheists”. You see, the latter terms are no longer politically correct due to the adhesive pejorative taint of their semantics. Putting it in more specific terms, seculars think that they are self-sufficient unto themselves if they adhere to a particular ideological construct. They consider that the reason for their own being arises from science and natural evolution, and are the masters of their own destiny. They are believers of scientific thinking and premises. The latter, is concerned concerned with finding physical physical third-dimentional evidence of a concept, that is, something that can be counted, weighed or seen with physical eyesight. eyesight. I will henceforth call this scientific scientific materialism. On the other hand, creationists think that their existence, and the cosmos which obviously surrounds it are the work of a Prime Creator, otherwise known as “God”. This, incidentally was the prevailing culture among the English descended “colonials” of America in the mid 18 th century, during which the United States

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was created. It explains the creationists symbols and slogans of “in God we trust”, “under God”, etc. Mind you, the two ideological camps of Secularism and Creationism are not entirely populated by extreme believers (like discrete numbers 1 and 2) but instead by millions of part-believers, quasi-believers and particularly convenience believers of either doctrine (more like natural numbers 1.33 and 1.88, for example). As in all sectors of human endeavour there are extremists, also called “radicals” at both ends of these two ideological continuums, spectra or rainbows, that span the two ends. A good example of quasi-believers in the fold of Creationists are those who attend a mosque, Church or synagogue to be seen and also for contact networking, as well as those who practice ritual formalities of Ramadan, Easter and Yom Kip pur, but do not apply the spirit of those rituals to their daily life for the rest of the year. These may tend to lean toward Secularism more than toward Creationism in their everyday practice. It is then business as usual until some unexpected natural or man-made catastro phe strikes, unexpectedly, for which Secularism may not offer an explanation. As examples of recent such events, take the 911 attack and the Sumatran tsunami. I must sincerely doubt that any Secularists caught physically in the midst of such disasters, found much comfort in their evolutionist credos. A war of civilizations looms in the horizon that began little by little since the Shah of Iran was deposed by extreme radical Moslem “ayatollahs” or “mullahs”. The conflict would seem inevitable, and certainly more likely than the lengthy restoration conflicts between Catholics and Protestants of the xx to xx centuries, if we realize that the two camps, the Western-Christian and the Mid Eastern Muslim, are not only in extreme ideological opposition to each other but specially extremely extemporaneous to each other. The Moslem culture of today bears little difference to what has prevailed in recent centuries since the advent of the prophet Muhamed. In fact, there is hardly any contribution from this culture after the glorious days when it gave us no less than algebra and the decimal system! We can say that for the most part, this culture today represents a medieval mind set. That notwithstanding, Moslem radicals seek modern nuclear technology, bought by huge Middle East oil revenue. What is going to happen? If we do not carry out a preemptive nuclear strike because our politicians want to accommodate rather than confront, they will surely strike us first, perhaps accompanied by the on-thePage 2 of 7


ground hotility of their reactivated sleeping cells. Are we going to have to fight them in the streets? If so how many sympathizers do they count on among the socalled peaceful, Allah fearing co-religionists. There are discoveries duly documented of natural conditions that portent calamitous disasters that will probably occur sooner or later. One such set of conditions is that of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Western shore of the Canary island of La Palma. The intense seismicity of this volcano plus the known unstable soil mechanics of this notorious fault, could produce a sudden collapse of the Western half of the volcano into the Atlantic. This would in turn generate 12 consequent disastrous tsunamis against all Western shorelines from the Canadian Maritimes to the Caribbean basin. This, by the way, would cause the almost complete destruction of shore facilities on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. It would include the destruction of naval facilities, refineries and commercial ports. The size of the chaos would make a historical footnote of the New Orleans Katrina incident and could virtually cripple the U.S. as an Atlantic nation. This reminds us of the known explosive seismicity of the Yellostone volcanic caldera, which when it goes boom, can cause global famine and death. This is the result of a world-wide ash cloud which will produce something like an ice age, killing most crops and those who feed on them. This scenario took place in 1816, in a much smaller scale, when the Tambora volcano in the Southern Far East erupted. It actually caused widespread famine in many European countries. These lurid scenarios are potentially quite real, if not necessarly imminent. What will the Secularists resort to when caught physically by them? They do not have to be unfaithful to their credos of natural science and evolutionism. Just set them aside for a while. They could just say to themselves: “Why not give a shot to so-called ‘contractual prayer’? What is there to loose?” It is said in the New Testament that Jesus gave much importance to faith even if not much bigger than a mustard seed, one that could possibly grow into a sizable mustard tree!! Chapter II - Contractual Offer From the Prime Creator

The prayers contained in these psalms are statements of your grandiosity, of uplifting recognition that if you will but act in the nature of your creation , you will Page 3 of 7


succeed beyond your wildest dreams. The reason: you have been created in the image of the Prime Creator. This means that for practical purposes you carry a spark of the Prime Creator with you, but above you, until such time as you are worthy of uniting with it, which is your destiny. Declaring your faith, even a mustard seed’s worth, in your potential divinity nears you to the source, Prime Creator that once created you in His image. Here lies the secret of faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. In plain words faith is believing that a good will befall you, before it materializes or becomes visible. The inspired writers of these five psalms describe poetically the good things that will come or happen to you if you will but behave as they indicate, that is, and truly (or at least with a mustard’s seed worth of faith) believe in the conditional commitment of and by the Prime Creator to whom your prayer is addressed. You are told that such and such wonderful things will happen to you if you will carry out your part by accepting and living by the statement of what the Prime Creator will perform in exchange . One important point is yet to be made. Catholicism and Orthodoxism are the nearest to explaining the place or location of the three (3) entities here involved, when they say “In the name of the Father (Prime Creator). The Son (you, the created) and the Holy Ghost (known here and mostly as The Lord, Lord of Hosts, and also Lord of Jacob). Simultaneously, they make the “sign of the cross”, touching the forehead (sym bolizing the Creator or Father), the Son, touching the abdomen (the belly from which you incarnated) and the Holy Ghost, touching each shoulder and tracing the span between them (symbolizing the Lord, Lord of Hosts or Lord of Jacob) as midpoint, so to speak, or intermediary between Prime Creator and the Son!. By the way, the Orthodox (Rusian, Greek, etc.) touch the right shoulder first, instead of the left one as the Catholics do, which makes no real difference. The im portant thing is not to mindlessly make the sign of the cross without thinking about the deep symbolism that it represents. There is one final concept that we should explore here about the situation between harmlessness and the utter despair of impotence, before addressed. A harmless situation is a merry one, needs no comment. But a situation somewhere between harmlessness and utter impotence could contain options for self-defense (for example) through personal action. Page 4 of 7


This personal action of self-defense could be non-violent (e.g., evasion) or violent (e.g., combative), the latter causing possible disablement or injury to those individuals, if any, causing the perceived threat. This is fertile ground for a dilemma, such as afflicted prince Hamlet in the famous drama by Shakespear by that name: “To be or not to be, that is the question, whether it is nobler in the minds of those who suffer to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or, to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. . .” In a situation of complete incapacity to physically evade danger (i.e., cornered) and under the threat of death or grave injury to yourself caused by fellow individual(s) are you prepared to a) fight for your life, thus exercising self-preservation with whatever means are at your disposal, or b) commend yourself to the Prime Creator through the recitation of one or all of the five psalmic contractual prayers? This is a difficult question to answer. If I may be permitted to contribute a response concordant with this essay, it is this: If you habitually commend yourself to the Prime Creator through the recitation of one or all of the referred psalmic prayers during times when you are not under any threat, you should be building for yourself in so doing a capsule of protective grace promised by those same prayers, within which none of those difficulties should reach you. By the same token, if you are not amenable to practice recitation of these Psalmic prayers for your own private reasons, you may be leaving yourself to the mercy of whatever physical means of protection you have (e.g., handguns and other side arms), and at your own physical risk. The laws of most U.S. jurisdictions justify such a stance (those of many foreign jurisdictions, do not, such as the UK). The ten commandments do not. You have to decide by which set of laws you will abide. The following are the five “Contractual Psalmic Prayers” which constitute the core of this essay. They will each be followed by a section on terminology called “Glossary” to which the reader may refer close by. The Psalmic prayers are reproduced in their original form, and then further followed by their corresponding analysis.

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Chapter III – The Five Contractual Psalmic Prayers

Psalm 23 “The Good Shepherd” Stanza # 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The Lord is my sheperd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me besides the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they confort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Glossary Green pastures = abundance. Sheperd = your guardian defender Still waters = calm; peacefulness. Restore = renew; restablish to optimum. Righteousness = right (true) thinking; opposite of bad (untrue) thought. Shadow of death = appearance of death or the worst possible outcome; false belief. My enemies = my bad (untrue) thoughts: my fears; my doubts; self condemnation; criticism of others. Anointment = praise; gladness; celebration; consecration. Cup Runs Over = more than expected fullness. House = a house not material in nature, nut heavenly.

Analysis If you will but believe (even if with only a mustard seed’s worth) that the Lord is your caretaker and guardian, He being a spark of the Prime Creator, then the Page 6 of 7


spark, droplet or molecule, containing all of the Prime Creator attributes, is an all powerful entity in your favor to protect you. The logic of the effectiveness, even in diffident belief of this by a Secularist, is that if she/he was thus created by the Prime Creator, then ignorance or plain skepticism by her/him is not grounds to disable the original commitment of the Prime Creator to protect and exalt even the skeptical created, for which He undertakes responsibity to uphold and care for. Prodigality is the underlying purpose, therefore. He will not abandon even the truly wicked, since he created all of them. In other words, from Prime Creator’s viewpoint, the ignorance or foolishness of the created, led astray, by let us say, momentarily fashionable ideologies, does not and cannot preclude the desire by Prime Creator to protect even his disbelieving created (provided they show at least a mustard seed of faith!!)..

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Psalm Magic or Practical Prayer

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