Prayer From Within a Cave
Some of our oldest human painting and prayers are found deep inside the darkness of caves. We will never know their actual purpose but on some levels they tell us how human imagination cultivates narratives in the depths of existence, at the core of the soul.
“I want to live outside the frame,
Which alienates me from myself.
Please, free my soul of its prison,
So I may celebrate Your Name as
“The Liberator”.
Emma Shamba Ayalon’s translation of the 8th verse in today’s psalm 142 lives outside familiar frames -- she reimagines the meaning of this poem-prayer, composed inside the confines of a cave. Perhaps it is about the mental prisons within each one of us -- and also about the real unbearable reality of so many people at any given moment in time - behind bars, held against their will in caves, in danger, in darkness, and deep in despair.
What about this prayer from a cave may offer us and others some sort of solace and words with which to not lose hope and labor towards liberation?
The prayer is introduced with a detail but not a story:
מַשְׂכִּ֥יל לְדָוִ֑ד בִּֽהְיוֹת֖וֹ בַמְּעָרָ֣ה תְפִלָּֽה׃
A maskil poem of David, while he was in the cave. A prayer.
Ps. 142:1
David’s story included dramatic escapes and several perils in caves. Back in Psalm 57 there’s a hymn about that time he fled from Saul into a cave and made it out alive. But this one’s different. In this psalm there’s real danger and the sense of a dead-end, a trap. With no backstory this psalm sounds like screaming from deep inside the pit, perhaps the cave as a state of mind that feels very lonely, feels like being trapped -- feels like being in a deep dread.
On some level, at some time, for any reason - who among us has not been inside these soul caves?
Whoever wrote this psalm for whatever reason imagines David, not yet king, man on the run, calling out for help from deep inside a rut. He needs to get out - and he is driven by a purpose:
ה֘וֹצִ֤יאָה מִמַּסְגֵּ֨ר ׀ נַפְשִׁי֮ לְהוֹד֢וֹת אֶת־שְׁ֫מֶ֥ךָ בִּ֭י יַכְתִּ֣רוּ צַדִּיקִ֑ים כִּ֖י תִגְמֹ֣ל עָלָֽי׃
Free me from prison,
that I may praise Your name.
The righteous shall glory in me
for Your gracious dealings with me.
Ps. 142:8
David’s prayer-plea is purpose driven -- and conditional: Free me so that I can be a better version of myself and in better service to the Divine. Stuck in the cave, locked in his room, David knows he can’t live out his dream and what he thinks may be his mission. His plea is driven by the passion of his faith not only in the need for freedom but in the fact that his fate has more in store than cave-like existence. One day, he thinks, people will read this poem and be inspired, and be reminded -- somehow there are ways to overcome confinements, and sometimes our words and intentions have more power than we thought we had.
From a cave a young man’s poem is still heard today, and it echoes the broken prayers of so many who today may not have words of hope, or purpose, or the power to pray, stuck in pits and in caves and in the darkness.
Perhaps this psalm is not a sad but honest promise that liberation is always possible. But it is a reminder to keep digging our ways out of the caverns we at time find ourselves in - and to cultivate patience.
Help, we can and maybe must imagine, is on the way. And maybe we are each other’s helpers. Who in your world could use a helping hand out of despair, out of a cave - today?
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