Psalm 76:7
this soul is due for a good moppin'
And I meditated in the night with my own heart: and I was exercised and I swept my spirit. (Psalm 76:7 DR)
I know some people find cleaning to be very relaxing, but I am not one of them. I’ll do it when necessary, but there is a certain admitted sloth in my life by which I do not keep things in my house as tidy as they could be. What is fascinating is that I always find a well-kept space calming and desirable when I find myself in one, but there’s just something deep down that does not evidently cause me to create it in my own life.
The spiritual applications of this are of course readily apparent, as having a well-ordered and tidy soul, if you will, is even more important than that of one’s dwelling.
Although I will often vacuum my non-carpeted floors, sometimes there is no choice but to sweep with a broom, which is always depressing. Not so much because of thew action of sweeping, but because the broom tends to reveal exactly how much dust and dirt and other things are on the floor that may not be otherwise immediately apparent. I tend to walk barefoot around the house so I can sometimes feel it underfoot, but it’s not until I can see it that it becomes a problem.
There is something somewhat satisfying about seeping, though, and the action can be cathartic in that while it is a chore, it tends to have immediate results. It might reveal things you wish it hadn’t, but at least you can now deal with them without delay. Unless, of course, you’re like me and sweep it out of the way until next time…
In this verse the Psalmist continues his introspection in prayer in the depths of the night hours. In this solitude and silence he begins to sweep his spirit as it were, to examine himself and his conscience, to search out his heart and how it stands before God. This process will often reveal the hidden things that the busy-ness of the day may obscure, and while not necessarily pleasant is a sine qua non of spiritual progress in rooting out hidden faults.
But this sweeping must be with the intent not simply of rooting out sin or faults. For while this is important, the goal of rooting out sin is so that virtue can blossom and grow; by another metaphor, we weed out the garden of our hearts so that the weeds of sin do not crowd out virtue. Virtue itself can crowd out vice, but only if we are striving after it and growing in it. To sweep one’s spirit without a growth in virtue can be a deception that one has arrived, as the tidiness of the heart relative to its former condition can lead to indolence and a lack of self-awareness. Our Lord warns against this in respect to those freed from the demonic:
And when an unclean spirit is gone out of a man he walketh through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith: I will return into my house from whence I came out. And coming he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goeth, and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is made worse than the first. (Matthew 12:43-45 DR)
Without a growth in virtue, the mere avoidance of vice can paradoxically lead to more vice, not in the sense that we necessarily are inevitably destined to more vice, but rather that something must occupy our hearts; it will either be virtue or sin. A recently swept house can lead one to a false sense of security, since it now is relatively cleaner than before. But it is precisely when we think we are secure and standing that we should be the most vigilant, as St. Paul warns:
Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. Let no temptation take hold on you, but such as is human. And God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:12-13 DR)
Like with cleaning of a house, the frequent sweeping of the soul is useful in avoiding sin, resisting temptation and growing in virtue. For not only do we sweep up and discover hidden fault, but might even uncover hidden virtues and truths that now have a chance to grow and develop:
I put my mind to and fro, as if I were sweeping it with a broom. Like the woman in the Gospel, who swept the whole house diligently in search of the lost piece of money; so he searched his spirit, and brushed it up, as with a broom, in search of the hidden truth. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 76, 6.)
For this animation the words used in the Psalms practically begged me to go literal with this, and obedient to the call I did.
I found this great image of a monk sweeping from a mediaeval manuscript and cut it out in Photoshop. Next I isolated the arms, head and keys and made use of the new-ish Generative Fill in Photoshop to replace a lot of the deleted pixels. It’s certainly not perfect and often gives head-scratching results, but when it works it gives some stupidly good results, and often gives you three equally good options. It makes this type of animation and compositing much easier to pull off and more do-able on the whole.
In After Effects I brought all the layers in and applied the Puppet Tool to the base image of the body and then used PuppetTools 3 to link those pins to Nulls and then parented the other layers to specific Nulls so that they would follow the animation of those Nulls.
Next I animated the rotations of the various layers (including the keys) and then offset them in time both for visual interest but also to make it feel like the action of the sweeping motion actually propels the movement of the keys, which is always a nice touch if it can be pulled off.
Enjoy.
And I meditated in the night with my own heart: and I was exercised and I swept my spirit.
(Psalm 76:7 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: