Word: psalmist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...bomb split open the universe and revealed the prospect of the infinitely extraordinary, it also revealed the oldest, simplest, commonest, most neglected and most important of facts: that each man is eternally and above all else responsible for his own soul, and, in the terrible words of the Psalmist, that no man may deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto...
...Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," enjoined the Psalmist. As the murdered Yitzhak Rabin is laid to rest in Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl, one cannot help but think now more than ever...
...traditional metaphor for this is that of a mosaic. But Richard Rodriguez, the Mexican-American essayist who is a psalmist for our new hybrid forms, points out that the interaction is more fluid than that, more human, subject to daily revision. "I am Chinese," he says, "because I live in San Francisco, a Chinese city. I became Irish in America. I became Portuguese in America." And even as he announces this new truth, Portuguese women are becoming American, and Irishmen are becoming Portuguese, and Sydney (or is it Toronto?) is thinking to compare itself with the "Chinese city" we know...
...also cooperation, together with "all the great principles of Western civilization" -- justice, truth, charity. "It now becomes our time to be the powerhouse from which the ideals spread . . . and do their mysterious work of lifting the life of mankind from the level of the beasts to what the psalmist called a little lower than the angels." Other nations can "survive," but America can endure only if its veins are filled with "the blood of purpose and enterprise and high resolve...
...shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" inquires the psalmist. With reverence, replies Mordecai Richler. Plus a few gags ("What's black and white and brown and looks good on a lawyer?" "A Doberman"); a couple of philosophical digressions ("Liquor, once you're hooked on it, is a hard habit to break. Like God, Henry thought . . ."); some manic riffs on fame ("That dumbbell the Duke of Windsor he threw in the sponge for a tart. You want the Duke and Duchess for a charity ball, you rent them like a tux from...