here's a little explanation of the twist on psalm 23 from below, that i emailed to jesse awhile ago. i'm not sure how accurate or insightful it is, but it's my understanding of the francis schaeffer's line of thought:

sheep means mankind in general, belief that somewhere along the line, man will figure out ultimate meaning and stuff, whether or not it happens in your lifetime. after awhile people came to the conclusion that man's intelligence can't produce actual meaning but can only reduce everything to mechanics. this inevitably leads to complete despair or insanity (nietzche, da vinci), so people gradually stopped trying to find meaning in the area of reason and started looking towards non-reason. this shift was illustrated with kierkegaard, who was one of the first philosophers to place faith and meaning solely and completely in the category of irrationality.

this led to 'everything is my shepherd', where everything means nature and primitive man; return to basics, and in a sense, absurdity. that is, throw off rational thought and thought processes. this idea is similar to eastern religions in some ways, like how in buddhism everything's part of the same fabric or something like that. another part of 'everything is my shepherd' is how people were reduced from having absolute standards to judge the things that come through your senses to knowing only what your senses tell you (what IS, is all there is - so everything that is, is right, and is my shepherd), to not even being sure that what your senses tell you about the world around is really what's there. that transitioned into 'nothing is my shepherd.'

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this is way past the deadline, but whatever:

april is the cruelest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with spring rain.

no commentary this year.

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