Psalm 9:3

non nisi te domine

I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing to thy name, O thou most high. (Psalm 9:3 DR)

As I was recently driving across the country I was listening to some podcasts, which unfortunately always seemed to get tagged with ads at the beginning and interspersed throughout. I don’t generally watch TV or listen to radio, so these kinds of ads are—mercifully—relatively few in my life.

So whenever I am exposed to them I find myself amused at just how vapid and shallow the advertisers assume their potential customers are. They tend to use really lame humor or clearly put on accents or an overwrought hype that promises happiness from the thing they are selling. It has nothing to do with the actual product, for they are not really selling a product and they certainly are not marketing a product. Rather, they are trying to sell an emotional state as this abject appeal to the lower appetites is completely meant to bypass any thought and merely get you to act based on how you are promised to feel after doing so.

It really is fairly pathetic and it is kind of shocking that it actually works, since they keep doing it. However, it is not merely the messaging but rather the incessant bombardment of these messages that causes it to work.

I found this out after the unpleasantness of 2020 and all Covid related nonsense. My wife and I rarely engage in any kind of TV or movies or pop culture of any kind, but in early 2021 we were at someone’s house for the great high feast day of American Spirituality—the Super Bowl. This was still in the midst of the insanity in respect to masking and social distance-ing, and what struck both of us as we talked about it afterwards was just how ubiquitous the messaging about all of these things was. Every ad had something about it in some way, the messaging—either overtly or more subtly—was to comply, and that doing so made you a good person.

In retrospect it is no wonder so many people had their brains broken during that time.

Employing the lower appetites towards a cause or some other end—whether out of pleasure or fear—is nothing new, but we have made it an art form. Our technological prowess has enabled this to an extent that tyrants of the past could have only dreamed of, and now we live in it every single day. And unless we make concerted efforts to block it from our lives and replace it with more virtuous things, we will not escape its influence.

This is especially true in a prosperous society where our appetites can be effortlessly aroused and indulged. We can start to believe the lies and the marketing (but I repeat myself) that the things of this world will make us happy or that the deprivation of the things of this world will make us miserable. It is a lie, of course, because these are temporal things and temporal pleasures that pass away, even if in the moment they can take on an ecstasy that seems transcendent.

As the Psalmist continues this Psalm in this passage, he seemingly repeats himself by restating the previous passage in different words. This is partially because of the parallelism of the poetic form, but it also serves another end. By doubling this expression of exultation he creates a structure that ping-pongs from his interior intention to his outward expression of praise. We can chart this structure as follows:

A. I will give praise to Thee, O Lord, with my whole heart (interior)
B. I will relate all Thy wonders (exterior)
A. I will be glad and rejoice in Thee (interior)
B. I will sing to Thy name, O Thou Most High (exterior)

In this manner he demonstrates that both his interior motivation and his exterior action arise from the same intentionality, for it will be noticed that each clause begins with the phrase “I will.” That is, his praise that encompasses his whole heart is not an emotional exultation exclusively but follows from his act of will to give praise to the Lord. Similarly, in this passage his gladness and rejoicing are not in the satiation of any of his appetites but solely in the object of his affection and will; that is, the Lord Himself.

St. Augustine beautifully explicates this meaning:

Not any more in this world, not in pleasure of bodily dalliance, not in relish of palate and tongue, not in sweetness of perfumes, not in joyousness of passing sounds, not in the variously colored forms of figure, not in vanities of men's praise, not in wedlock and perishable offspring, not in superfluity of temporal wealth, not in this world's getting, whether it extend over place and space, or be prolonged in time's succession: but, “I will be glad and exult in You,” namely, in the hidden things of the Son, where “the light of Your countenance has been stamped on us, O Lord:” for, “You will hide them,” says he, “in the hiding place of Your countenance.” (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 9, 3.)

This world and its pleasures are passing, as we all know from experience. Yet even with this experience we in our concupiscence are led again and again to believe its lies about how it can satisfy our souls, and we think ourselves more sophisticated because of our education and technology. Yet perhaps never more in the history of humanity have there been more societal pathologies that are too numerous to list yet so oppressive to the true freedom that God desires for us.

We have essentially made for ourselves more comfortable prisons, for everything that St. Augustine listed above is exactly the sort of thing that will be pounded into your head day after day to buy or want or crave or lust after. Yet they are prisons nevertheless, for the more we indulge the flesh and allow our appetites to guide our decisions, the less free we become and the more sin takes hold in our souls. Can we truly say, like the Psalmist, that “I will be glad and exult in You,” and do so without the comforts and accoutrements that this world has afforded us? Is our Lord alone enough for us, that we would be willing to be deprived of all other things so as to posses Him?

It is said that St. Thomas Aquinas had a vision in which the Lord appeared to him and asked him what he would desire as reward for his labors. There are varying accounts of what St. Thomas said, and it is often popularly compressed to be Non nisi Te, Domine, which is often rendered “Nothing except You, Lord.” However, it is probably closer to “Nothing without You, Lord,” meaning that whatever blessings the Lord might bestow on him in this life, they will be meaningless unless he is in union with God. This tracks with St Paul’s words which brings to fruition the Psalmist’s meaning:

For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, to be content therewith. I know both how to be brought low, and I know how to abound: (everywhere, and in all things I am instructed) both to be full, and to be hungry; both to abound, and to suffer need. I can do all these things in him who strengtheneth me. (Philippians 4:11-13 DR)

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I wanted to explore the nature of being glad and rejoicing, but I wasn’t having a successful time in visualizing that, so I decided to give movement to it, as it were, in a sort of abstract way.

I used the plugin I Ate Mushrooms (yes, it’s actual name) to generate transitions between some machine learning models of various objects. This plugin allows you to use multiple sources to create some really bizarre or abstract (but usually bizarre) animations, so I intentionally kept it in the abstract side of things, since I didn’t want toucans with mushroom bodies.

I then used CC Ball Action to create this LED wall type of look and then animated the rotations so as to create this nice churning look. I don’t know how well it visualizes anything, but sometimes that’s how it goes.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: