Scripture Sunday: Psalm 90 and Mountaintop Removal

by Joe Meinholz

Psalm 90 (NRSVUE)
A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
    in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth
    or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn us back to dust
    and say, “Turn back, you mortals.” For a thousand years in your sight
    are like yesterday when it is past
    or like a watch in the night. You sweep them away; they are like a dream,
    like grass that is renewed in the morning;
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
    in the evening it fades and withers. For we are consumed by your anger;
    by your wrath we are overwhelmed. You have set our iniquities before you,
    our secret sins in the light of your countenance. For all our days pass away under your wrath;
    our years come to an end  like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years
    or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
    they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger?
    Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you. So teach us to count our days
    that we may gain a wise heart. Turn, O Lord! How long?
    Have compassion on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
    so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us
    and as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be manifest to your servants
    and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us
    and prosper for us the work of our hands--
    O prosper the work of our hands!

Last Sunday I observed morning worship by my car on a roadside in the place that once was the town of Monson, West Virginia. Today it is the crater of a hollowed out mountaintop, the site of strip-mining for coal. The mountain is blasted away, the town evicted and buried, and only a barren landscape remains, criss-crossed with access roads to active strip-mining further down the horizon.  I read Psalms 90 from the crater’s edge, and was both comforted and disturbed. I hope this poetic reflection on the psalm invites you as well into this ambiguous precipice of encounter and pleading. 


….
Oh desolation, look at the work of human hands
this blasting, this blasphemy


Before the mountains, you are God
After the mountains, we plead, be our God again
though we quake at what that could mean


Oh dread these human hands have wrought
this machine, this greed, this gnawing hunger devouring hills
this churning and spitting, these boil water advisories 
this sucking the delicate thread of life into a shop vac, this “project”


How long, oh God? 


….
Not long, children of wrath


A thousand years like a sigh, like a slip off the cliff
these mountains will see your demise and rejoice


Not long, children of toil


Binding lie that the continued humming of the machine keeps us safe
yet from the hollows flows a trickle of doubt, a stream, a slow rusting of chains
in just a few short years, sweet rainfall can rust to vapor every death-machine
and fill our cups to overflowing


Not long, children of trouble.


Old man Moses looked on the promise land
settling into the dust he breathed out blessings, saying,


“May the Lord bless his land
    with the precious dew from heaven above
    and with the deep waters that lie below;
with the best the sun brings forth
    and the finest the moon can yield;
with the choicest gifts of the ancient mountains
    and the fruitfulness of the everlasting hills;”


Not long, children of dust.


….
Oh LORD
the way You use your hands
even here, years after the desolation
Midwife hands, Dancer hands
whirling, writhing,
shaping, squeezing, 
swirling, birthing
fashioning, forming
adorning


After the mountains, we plead, with hands lifting up
be our God again

Resources
Photo by Duke Ecotoxicology- https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/ecotoxicologylab/research/mountaintop-mining/
More information on resistance to mountaintop removal: https://grist.org/article/reece/
Words inspired by the People’s Pastoral Letter Catholic committee of Appalachia: https://www.ccappal.org/pastoral-letters

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Joe Meinholz is currently a seminarian at Duke Divinity School. He grew up farming in Ho Chunk land (Southern Wisconsin) and is an aspiring community organizer, pastor, water protector, and lover of Jesus.

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