I have been re-collecting myself frequently these days: a lost phone, a credit card left at a restaurant, another ball in the lake on hole 13. Memories too are flooding back from childhood on up. Recollections.
My encounter with the Psalms this past summer seems somehow to fit right in, presenting the recollections of God’s people in a contemporaneous, poetic, and often raw account of their experiences chronicled in the preceding history books. The Psalms have been aptly referred to as the internal account of those external circumstances.
This Reflection is also somewhat embarrassing. I have written before about my delight in discovering Malcolm Guite, the English priest, and poet. By following him, I found out that he was teaching a five-day seminar on the Psalms through Regent College over zoom. Through this course, I became truly embarrassed, even stunned, by my lack of engagement with the Psalter as a body of songs, poems, and prayer. I also realized that so many of the giants in all Christian faith traditions singled out the Psalms as central to their prayer life. From the Benedictine monasteries to the halls of Oxford and Cambridge, to Bono and to Regent College, these songs have lit up spiritual life. I found that Augustine, Brueggeman, Aquinas, NT Wright, Eugene Petersen, and many others had penned impassioned commentaries on the Psalms.
It is not that I had no familiarity with them over the years. I once visited a monastery where the Psalms were chanted. I knew several from memory but the magnitude of their witness and path for prayer did not penetrate. The Guite course convicted me that if I would accept this intersection with the Psalms in their entirety as a leading from God, even this late in life, my prayer life, and my connection with God would be energized in a new way... I realized too the weakness and inconsistency of my own prayers and how separated they were from my own struggles and those across the world. And so, it came to me: Why not pray them as my prayers, chant them, join Christ in them: do something to engage this path now set before me.
Guite introduced me to three additional resources outside the Scriptures: C.S. Lewis' REFLECTIONS on the PSALMS, David Taylor's OPEN and UNAFRAID (my favorite), and DAVID'S CROWN, Malcolm Guite's response in poetry to each one of the Psalms. Then, I recollected: Two years before on an 8-day retreat I had taken Eugene Petersen's book on the Psalms of Ascent, A LONG OBEDIENCE in the SAME DIRECTION, as a guide for the time. On my shelf, I had Reardon's CHRIST in the PSALMS which I had picked up at a Leanne Payne conference years before and never read. On my shelf also, I had a well-worn copy of Kathleen Norris' book, THE CLOISTER WALK, which I keep returning to without knowing exactly why. Maybe it is because she says things like this:
“I regard monks and poets as the best degenerates in America.
Both have a finely developed sense of the sacred potential in
all things; both value image and symbol over utilitarian purpose or
the bottom line; they recognize the transformative power hiding in
the simplest things, and it leads them to commit absurd acts: the
poem! the prayer! what nonsense!” (p.146).
In the midst of all this reflection, my brother sent me Cynthia Berguault's more recent book, CHANTING the PSALMS, complete with a disc to help with learning to chant. The book is a marvelous testimony to the transformative power of the Psalms in the inner life and their lasting connection to the contemplative way in the Church over centuries.
Confronted thus during the two and a half months after the course, I could either change my ways or consider it a passing interest. This question lingers: Can I devote myself to praying the Psalms? The word "devotion" has stuck with me ever since I read ACTS 2:42. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Pray for me.
I would also invite you, my friends, into this singular focus with me because the Psalms are also communal, a peoples' authentic expression to their God. As an example, in the Psalms of Lament, there is a disconcerting and spacious ground for the expression of sadness, pain, anger, hostility, fear, and despair. Emotions and feelings we often suppress and ignore to the detriment of our own mental and physical health as well as community health. These Psalms also testify repeatedly to the goodness, lovingkindness, and steadfastness of God. Taylor comments:
“These words [concerning God's goodness] need to find
themselves on our lips and said out loud, again and
again, in the company of others with whom we can
share our pain so they can work their healing power
on us. They heal us by offering us an opportunity to
become whole, rather than leaving us fractured by our
losses and disoriented in our sadness. They heal us
by offering us hope in the form of words that name
realities, helping us to make sense of often senseless things.
And they heal us by bringing us face to face with a God
who is compassionate and gracious, abounding in love,
faithful to the end. (Ps. 86:15).”
The Psalms give expression to this and so much more and I hope in praying them they will touch in me, by the Spirit, those groans within me, my friends, the Church, and the world. Again, please pray for me. Your prayer could be Psalm 1:
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked.
nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he
meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not whither. In all
that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the
congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the
righteous but the way of the wicked will perish. (RSV).
In closing, I share with you the beautiful, imaginative response by Guite. Enjoy:
Psalm 1: I Beatus vir qui non abit
Come to the place where every breath is praise,
And God is breathing through each passing breeze.
Be planted by the waterside and raise
Your arms with Christ beneath these rooted trees,
Who lift their breathing leaves up to the skies.
Be rooted too, as still and strong as these,
Open alike to sun and rain. Arise
From meditation by these waters. Bear
The fruit of that deep rootedness. Be wise
In the trees’ long wisdom. Learn to share
The secret of their patience. Pass the day
In their green fastness and their quiet air.
Slowly discern a life, a truth, a way,
Where simple being flowers in delight.
Then let the chaff of life just blow away.
Blessings to each of you.
Trip and Laurie