In church this past Sunday, the Psalm reading came from Psalm 90. One line of it struck me: Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us. The bit that struck me was in the idea that God afflicts us.

I read and enjoyed a book recently, recommended to me by my church rector: The Will of God by Leslie D. Weatherhead. The basis of it is to critique those that might, in the midst of suffering, say that it is God's will; that it is never God's will for us to suffer, but that in our liberty, we are not restrained from acts of which the natural consequence is suffering.

While I think this view has a lot to commend itself and affords us a concept of a loving God better aligned with our earthly definition of love, it replaces a God who would intentionally injure us with One who merely lets us be injured. I think both have downsides.

Either way, the verse in question leaves no doubt in a straightforward reading that God does not just let us be afflicted, He afflicts us.

It might be splitting hairs, but I personally favor a God who, seeing me running into traffic would snatch and beat me rather than watch on, determined to let me learn my lesson naturally, even if the injuries were equal in either scenario.

I don't know why I felt compelled to write about this, but I did, and in doing, went to review the Psalm in full and was struck further by how the line that had first caught my attention actually ranks pretty low in the litany of active cruelties described.

Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men... (read: An older sibling: "stop hitting yourself!")

I was struck too by Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. but for no reason other than that it brough to mind Job; God demanding of him Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

So it seemed especially interesting that Psalm 90 is, by tradition, the only Psalm attributed to Moses, making it the earliest, which again parallels Job, as that book is similarly cited as being the earliest written book of scripture.

What does it mean that the earliest question posed by man was why we suffer? And what does it mean that both Job and Moses, who had direct interactions with the Almighty, understood the answer to be that He willed it so?

Beats me.

But it has gotten me thinking about how dismissively I approach the Psalms, which I don't think is unusual among thoughtful Christians. They plead for God to torture enemies, they lament our unjust sufferings; all of which seems wrong through the prism of Christ's teaching. But I think it suggests that I ought to find a way to adjust my thinking rather than to somehow find clever contextualizations that bring it into alignment with how I think it ought to be.

I'm planning on trying to actively read through them with a mind for how I can genuinely pray them. I have a copy of C.S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms which I've never read past the introduction, but which might be a useful guide.

Fun at Spirit Halloween.

On June 26th, 1777, an officer of the Continental Line, Captain Ephraim Anderson, was killed in the Battle of Short Hills. Three days later, Colonel Israel Sheve wrote in his journal "Col. Rhea Returned with the Body of Capt. Anderson is now Gone to Westfield to Bury him with the honours of war which he Deserves as he fought Brave, and fell in a Glorious Cause." Two hundred and forty-one years later, as a living relative, I got elected to his seat in the Society of the Cincinnati, which a healthy percentage of the people I know are aware of, since I tend to talk about it a lot...

Every October, the Society meets in Washington for a series of meetings and dinners.

One of the memorable highlights of this past weekend was the election of a new representative of Captain Jonathan Phillips by General David Petraeus. As the registrar, I had the honor of introducing him at the formal dinner, and got to visit a bit, (his ancestor, coincidentally, was the executor of the will of mine, the both of them having served in the same regiment), but had more time to speak with his wife since we were seated next to each other at a dinner.

Whenever I get the chance to talk to a notable public figure, I always enjoy asking about the experience. When I asked her to pinpoint when he became known, she mentioned Tom Brokaw referring to a successful "young general" in Mosul in 2003. I said sort of blithely that I find it appealing to have people always wanting to tell you how great you are. She mentioned the security issues, how he had been the only person in Bin Laden's recovered hard drive as a target.

I'd like to apologize to Sam Rockwell. You are an actor I have a lot of respect for, and in passing you on 12th Street this evening, you deserved better than to have "Pete & Pete!" shouted in your face, regardless of my fondness for your turn as Endless Mike on that show.

In other news, today I learned that Endless Mike was portrayed by an actor named Rick Gomez, and Sam Rockwell did not, in fact, ever appear on the show.

I practically never sit in the car to wait out the street-cleaning-no-parking period, but I happened upon the closest possible spot to my apartment coming home Sunday night, and with street cleaning suspended for Rosh Hashanah Thursday and Friday, I won't have to move until next Monday night!