NeuroDivine

Reflections on longing, exile, and the liturgy of care inspired by the texts of Psalm 42, Wisdom 10:15–11:10, and Mark 12:18–27

There are days when the soul feels like a bog in winter—still, sodden, waiting. Psalm 42 speaks into that ache: “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” It doesn’t rush to fix the sadness. It sits beside it, naming the thirst for God as a deer might pant for water. That image is not dramatic—it’s bodily, instinctive. It’s the kind of longing that lives in the bones, especially when the world feels too loud, too fast, too unkind.

And in the middle of that longing, there is the medicine. Not as cure, but as covenant. The daily regime—measured doses, timed rituals, the quiet clink of blister packs—is its own liturgy. It marks the hours. It teaches the body to wait, to trust, to receive. It is not heroic, but it is faithful. And in that faithfulness, something holy stirs.

Wisdom enters next, not as a concept but as a companion. She walks with the people in exile, not abandoning them to their suffering. She is not flashy. She is precise. She finds paths through the wilderness, gives words to the voiceless, and turns chaos into clarity. Her presence is like the hush before a liturgy begins—structured, spacious, protective. She doesn’t erase the pain, but she reframes it. She dignifies it.

Then comes the question in Mark’s Gospel—the kind that tries to trap, to flatten mystery into logic. Seven husbands, one woman, whose wife will she be? It’s a question that misses the point. And the reply is gentle but firm: “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” There’s something liberating in that. The kingdom is not a ledger. It’s not a puzzle to be solved. It’s a place where the living are held by the Living One.

Together, these readings offer a kind of spiritual scaffolding for those who live with deep interiority, who process slowly, who feel the world in textures and patterns. They say: your longing is holy. Your clarity is not cold—it is a gift. Your resistance to shallow answers is not defiance—it is devotion. And your daily medicine, your quiet compliance with the body’s needs, is not weakness—it is a form of prayer.

And so, even when the soul is cast down, even when the questions feel too sharp, even when exile seems endless, we say: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.” Not because the pain is gone, but because the presence remains.