Blessed

Living a Good Life: Insights from Psalm 1

In this episode, Fr Richard Healey reflects on living a good life through the lens of Psalm 1. He explores themes of righteousness, meditating on the law of the Lord, and the choices between good and evil. Using metaphors like the story of the two wolves, RH illustrates our internal struggle between positive and negative influences. He encourages us to choose the path of life and goodness by deeply engaging with spiritual teachings and allowing them to shape our hearts and minds, ultimately leading to a life that is blessed and fruitful.

00:00:00 I’m sure you’ve wondered from time to time what it means to live a good life. How do you actually embrace that? What is that look like, and how do you possibly manifest that? And in lots of ways, all of our readings are certainly the first reading from Jeremiah. And then this different take. We’re much more used to. Matthew’s version of the the nine blessings that he gives these beatitudes of how to live life well. And then Luke mixes it up. He gives us the four. Much more punchy, much simpler. Short and simple. Easier to remember. But then the contrasting woes as well. But actually, I want to focus more today on our Psalm because we listen to Psalm one, the first of the 150 Psalms that forms that collection. And that’s often right at the very center of our Bibles, and it offers us an insight into how to live that good life. It begins by saying, blessed is the one. And then there are three things who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked? Who doesn’t stand in the path of sinners? Who doesn’t sit in the seat of mockers? So first, that opening word in Hebrew, there are two different words for that we often translate as blessed.

00:01:36 The first is Baruch. And that kind of describes that experience of of just someone who is filled with joy and wonder who who’s dedicated themselves to the Lord. But the word that’s used here is another word. It’s ashtray. An ashtray is what happens in you when you see something happening in somebody else. You see that sense of somebody else living that good life. And you, you stirs you. You recognize the goodness in the other person, and you are able to recognize that within yourself. And that kind of calls you to a different way of life. And we’re told that there are three things that the person doesn’t do. They don’t walk in the way or in the counsel of the wicked. And someone who is wicked in the Jewish understanding is someone who confuses what is good and bad, what is good and evil. They call what is good bad and what is bad good. So they don’t walk in the way of the wicked, nor do they stand in the path of the sinner, the sinner within.

00:02:53 The biblical understanding is someone who misses the mark, who takes aim with a bow, and they miss the target entirely. Well, what’s the target? Jesus tells us that the two great commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your strength, and then to love your neighbor as yourself. So someone who isn’t able to love well misses the mark, and they are able to stand in the company in the way of sinners. And then the third category is those who sit then in the way of mockers or scoffers, the people who have become so jaded with life that they’re no longer able to see any sense of beauty, any sense of of things that lift them or inspire them or call them into something beyond ourselves. But notice the first is the way of someone who walks. Then it’s the way of someone who stands. And this is someone the way of sitting. So it’s that sense of there’s a certain freedom that comes from being able to move around to this increasingly just being dragged down, dragged down so that you slow down and then you begin to to stop and sit.

00:04:06 You settle in the way of wickedness. You no longer are able to be free. It’s that experience of just being so weighed down by by sin and those bad choices, by choosing the way of evil rather than the way of good. The slowly you’ve begun to be changed into someone that is is no longer able to do anything else. But then we’re told what is the characteristic of this person? Not just the three negatives, but what do they do? Whose delight is the instruction of Yahweh? And in that instruction they meditate both day and night. Now it’s a beautiful saying, this verse, the second verse of this psalm, because what are we told? How do we recognize someone who is blessed by the Lord? Will they find delight in the Torah? They find delight in the words and the instructions, the laws, the teachings, the instruction of the Lord. But in that commandment, in that instruction, in that life giving, they meditate day and night. The word for meditate is interesting in in Hebrew it’s Hagar, and it reminds us of the sound that a dove makes when it’s kind of cooing, or it’s also the sound that is described of a cow that is slowly digesting its food, you know, ruminating upon the food.

00:05:37 You kind of see that. And growing up on the farm, you know, watch the cows as they would slowly kind of digest things. It’s that sense that we get in the practice in the church of lectio divina, of meditating upon the word that you first read the scriptures, you proclaim them. You hear them as you listen to them, as you read them. But then you begin to take particular words and just to ponder them, to think them over and over within our hearts to to ponder how that might impact upon my life. How am I being open to the way of goodness or the way of evil? What is needs to be changed? What needs to be transformed within our experiences in order for that to happen? So is this loop of delighting in the word, but allowing then the word to call us into a deeper sense of even more delight in the Word of God. And it forms us. It shapes us. As we spend more time reading and praying the scriptures, slowly, our hearts begin to ponder more about the things that are good, the things that call us into freedom and call us into that life.

00:06:53 And what happens to someone who meditates on the law of the Lord by day and by night? They become like a tree planted by streams of water, which gives its fruit in due time and whose leaf does not wither. Everything they do is made successful. That’s the invitation. And note that rather than like a tree has to be planted, a tree has to be grounded in the wood. And so there is that sense of, of movement that happens. But there’s also this sense of being able to, to dwell now in the Word of God. But it’s not a, it’s there are times to be peripatetic to, to be wandering around, but there are times to be found, at times to try to to find our source and our summit, our life in God, and to find that place where we can be well nurtured, well nourished by the the streams of water that come by, and also to provide the fruit that is able to be offered to those around us. We’re never meant to just serve ourselves, but we went to be a source of life for those around us because the imagery comes from the Garden of Eden, the imagery comes from the story of creation.

00:08:05 It’s inviting us into that pondering of what happens when we are able to dwell in the very presence of God. The gift that all that is is happening. And what is that that leads to this life that is successful. A life that is really a life that is blessed and filled with the goodness. But first of all, not so are the wicked, for they are like chaff, and chaff is just the the empty husks of the wheat. You know, we aren’t able to digest them. They’re completely unfit for human consumption. Animals sometimes able to consume these, or they’re able to be ground back into the field to provide fertilizer for the next season of growing. But they’re they’re useless for us. And so the wind drives them away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, because the Lord knows the path of the righteous, but the path of the wicked will perish. So we’re invited into that experience of of recognizing there are these two choices.

00:09:13 Those two choices are always available. We can either be well nourished and nurtured by the Lord, by meditating and delighting upon the way of God, in which case that we will become this fruitful tree that is able to feed and nourish those around us. Or we can just allow the the way of sin, the way of evil, the way of bad choices, the way to redefine what is evil and good within our hearts to lead us into this empty husk that is completely useless within the world. They’re the choices. The rather blandly, rather provocatively are given before us. And so this invitation for us is to choose well, to choose well, the way of life. I’m reminded of that old Cherokee story of a grandfather sitting with his grandson, and the grandfather tells the young man that within you there are these two wolves, and one wolf is about life and integrity and goodness. The other wolf is about evil and hatred and destruction. And the young son says, well, how do I know which of the two wolves will will grow? How do I know which of the two wolves will become the source of life within me? And the grandfather says, well, it depends which wolf you feed.

00:10:38 Will we choose the way of life? Will we meditate upon the Word of God? Will we live in the way of a ray of blessing? Or will we choose the way of the wicked? Will we settle in our corruption? Will we settle in the way that doesn’t lead us into life? Any freedom? Let’s continue to to ponder and allow the delight in the law of the Lord to call us more deeply into freedom and into life today.