A prayer of Moses the man of God.
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
7 We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan.
10 Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
11 If only we knew the power of your anger!
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
12 Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
13 Relent, Lord! How long will it be?
Have compassion on your servants.
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
16 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children.
17 May the beauty of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.
Reflections
This psalm is unique in that it is the only one attributed to Moses.
It is also an astounding, monumental meditation upon time itself, our mortality, and the eternity that is God.
The psalmist is like a person who is trying to describe the vastness of space but fails, and by way of comparison can only describe his own smallness. “Before the mountains were born,” is a stunning phrase; how can mountains be born, and what being could bear them? Compare that verse of superhuman poetry to the ordinariness of mankind: “we are like the new grass of the morning, that by evening has dried and withered.” How very small and fragile we are as human beings. Yet the even before the mountains were born, beyond all markers, boundaries, definitions, beyond all human comprehension, there is only: “You are God.” We stop trying to make definitions of mysteries. We are silenced by being allowed a glimpse into the miracle.
Daily we are reminded of our mortality by way of the mortality of others. We are sometimes aware of the passage of time, of our personal time, how much we have lived, how much time we might have left. Most days we are so busy we are not aware of time until something jolts us and fixes a moment in memory. Our vision expands in such moments; we become aware not only of our time passing but also to include our awareness of time passing in the consciousness of others. In these moments we identify with others in our common humanity, our common fragility and our destiny.
This artwork was begun in April 2020 in response to the Covid 19 pandemic which was ravaging New York City. It felt like the psalm I needed to work with, it spoke to me urgently. Deaths were over a five hundred people a day. There was no vaccine, we did not know much about this disease, or how it transmitted. Lying awake at night in bed I would wonder if I too would become sick, if so, how much longer would I have to live? Would I be alive three weeks from now? The question seemed valid. Nobody likes having their mortality shoved in their face but that was exactly the situation we all found ourselves in. We went to bed at night wondering why and awoke to a new day wondering how we could continue. We sought guidance, something to believe in, something to hang on to.
I conceived the psalm as a series of twenty-four paintings, chronicling the passage of one day, and matching the passage of the day to the developments of the text. This analogy is derived directly from the text, where in poetical images one entire life may be reduced to the span of one day. “A thousand years in your eyes are like a yesterday gone.” I was struck by the two different time scales here in this sentence, a vast scale and a fleeting one. At age sixty-three I have more yesterdays than tomorrows, but that’s okay, that’s just a fact. I can choose how I want to respond to my being alive today.
The first six panels focus on the theme of continuity. God has been our abode, our shelter, for generations. Before the earth was spawned, there was God. These panels take place in daylight. This is our productive conscious time, we work, we take care of our families, we take care of our corner of the world. These panels come to rest upon a meditation on the enthronement: God is, and rules.
The next panels, beginning with number seven, “You turn your servants back to dust,” begins a long meditation upon our mortality and our limits. The sun sets. As the sun passes across the horizon, it continues to be visible, and takes on new context. I conceived of the circle not as the moon but as our unconsciousness, the counterpart to our conscious efforts of the day. We go to sleep, and we dream. We lose our conscious control; we open ourselves to doubts and fears that arise. I experienced disturbed sleep patterns, some nightmares and insomnia for months during 2020, and I know many others did as well.
At some point in our darkness, we reach our breaking point and we cry out. The death toll of friends, family and neighbors from the pandemic has become too much to bear. “Relent Lord! How long will our afflictions last?” (Panel 16) is followed by the plea, “Have pity on us, your servants.”
The psalm turns to its third and final theme. It opens upon this theme with “Teach us to account for our days,” (panel 18) “That we may gain a heart of wisdom.” In our despair we ask for guidance, and we open ourselves to enlightenment. In the panels, this is reemergence of the dawn. We learn that while we cannot overcome our destiny as mortals, we can take on our humanity, accept responsibility for our actions, and choose our attitude and responses. This theme of our own accountability is a guidepost by which to live.
The dawn increases in the panels. Knowing what we know, what are we to do with this awareness? We realize that we are all we are in the same boat. We can respond with compassion to the struggles and angers of people around us who are confused and dismayed. We are not really any different. So, we put on our masks, we step out of our homes, we go to work. We give up trying to control that which we cannot and focus on taking care of what we can with love. Whether you have an avowed religious path or not, these simple acts are indeed works of faith, done every day by countless billions of human beings.
It is amazing to me that this psalm, which is so dark for so long, ends with loving images and celebration. “May Your sweetness rest upon us (panel 21), “That we may sing for joy and be glad all of our days.” The psalm ends with a complete trust and reliance upon God to “establish the works of our hands for us” (panel 23) which is resoundingly echoed in the final panel.
The painting cycle has come full circle, and if I were to display the panels it would be done so that panel 24 comes back next to panel number one. Just as there is no break in the cycle of the transition of daylight and nighttime, there is no break in the cycle of this psalm. We will encounter our old fears again, they may return strongly and frighten us. We will pass through darkness again to face a new dawn, and in that moment, we recommit ourselves to doing our best, to gathering our courage, to once again stepping out in faith. We commit to being guided by a loving power as we understand it in our lives.
I took many liberties creating this artwork. The text itself in the panels is not the complete psalm. It is a condensed version of the psalm, for reasons of space on the panels. While I mostly used the New International Version for the text, I referenced other translations, including King James and the translation by Robert Alter. There is also text that I consciously omitted. Psalm 90 contains many references to the wrath of God. My decision in eliminating these verses was because I did not want the Covid epidemic to be seen as a judgement upon mankind. I do not believe that, although quite possibly the ancient Israelites might have attributed this invisible affliction as a divine punishment. But a tornado is not a divine punishment, a friend killed in a car accident is not a divine punishment, and neither is a child with cancer a punishment. I can only say that these things simply are and are some of the consequences that happen to us as spiritual beings living here in a three-dimensional world where matter collides.
The work does not give equal distance to the hours of the day, as the time of transitions in dawn and dusk happen over several panels each. It seemed to me that the transitions from light to dark, and back to light, offered dramatic possibilities for the text to speak and I extended those moments.
The work makes use of collage photographs, including photos by Dorothea Lang of a migrant mother (panel 17) and images by the photographer Sebastiao Salgado. I feel deeply indebted to him, as an artist and human being. He photographed the victims of a terrible drought in Ethiopia in the 1990’s and these images are in panels 14, 15, 16. Some photographic images are barely visible, such as in panel 12, where an embryo is collaged within the orange circle below the horizon. In the slideshow, the music is the finale from the score of Fahrenheit 451 by the composer Bernard Herrmann.
In arranging the composition, I tried to create some dynamism by varying the sizes of the circles, so they grew and diminished, and in raising and lowering the horizon line to create movement. Otherwise, we have twenty-four panels of basically the same composition. The inspiration for the composition was my bedroom window: for forty years I have looked out over the same scene. An alley and some trees facing due east, I could watch the sun rise every morning. A circle in a vertical rectangle.
The painting was done in acrylic paint over the photographs, and the letters stamped with acrylic paint. I used sea sponges to create the fractured light and impressionistic surfaces. The original paintings were done on canvas transferred onto wooden panels. The taped off borders of the canvas became the golden frame that disappears and reemerges in the paintings - our frame of consciousness, our awareness of the passage of time. Around each panel are collaged prayers in Hebrew. They also disappear and reemerge, as there is a constant cycle of prayer and conversation being human beings and God. You never know when someone who is sitting next to you on the subway may be engaged in prayer and may be praying for you.
All in all, creating this piece has completely involved me, and for the time that it took, from April 2020 to now at the end of 2021, I am grateful. Taking time with this piece, meditating upon it, returning to rework it and re-imagining it, has given me purpose and focus and joy. It’s been said that every work of art is a love letter to the world, so to you, my dear reader, I give you this gift. May you find purpose and joy in all your days.
