A Third Side

A Reflection on the Psalm for July 11th, 2021:
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Psalm 85

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people. Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. 

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. 

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps. 

R. Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.

Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

An old anthem from when I was in my twenties resurfaced this week: Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. This song rocked me to my core every time I listened to it back then, and still when I heard it this week, it brought back that ache—the universal ache of human existence. If you don’t already know the song, you should really give it a listen. Joni Mitchell is a Canadian singing-songwriting legend, and Both Sides Now has been recorded by dozens of artists since its original release in 1968.


The song is a reflection on her perspective of clouds, love, and life from an innocent, and perhaps youthful, if not naive viewpoint, and then again from one of experience, likely the experience of suffering. What interested me when I heard this song (again for the first time) this week, was the limited perspective she shares. When I was listening in my twenties, I agreed with Joni, that these two sides are our human experience of love—they were my narrow human experience of love. But as I’ve grown in faith, I see these perspectives as two sides of the same coin. She writes:


Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way that you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show
And you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It's love's illusions that I recall
I really don't know love
Really don't know love at all


Psalm 85 gives us another perspective on love. It speaks of the continuity of love, the personification of love, the affect of love. When Love speaks, and we receive His words, peace befalls us. There is a coming together of worlds, a reparation of wrongs, a lifespring of new hope. We the faithful call out to hear the voice of Love, because we know that when we do, He will melt away our sense of confusion; He will recalibrate our hearts and lift us out of the finite into the eternal. Rather than fearing the love lost in this world, we will fear separation from Love Himself. Rather than folding in on ourselves out of protection from what we experience as the repercussions of love here on Earth, we can open ourselves with reckless abandon into the secure, constant, never failing love of God.


​This kind of love is unfathomable, and can seem unattainable, still our instructions today are really quite simple: all He asks of us is our faithfulness, and in return, He will offer us the kiss of peace.


Having said these things, what is still true is that I don’t know much about love either, Joni, but as I risk remaining open to what God has to say about it, I’m slowly beginning to learn more.




Lori MacDonald

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