Prayers at the Western Wall, Jerusalem, 1981.
If
I were to send into space one item that would explain the human experience to
other civilizations, it would be the Psalms. They would serve as
warning and explanation and exaltation of our capabilities.
Cross
us, and we will dash your little ones against the rocks. Exile us, and we will
nonetheless try to sing God’s song in foreign territory. Wow us, and our
spirits and words will soar in thanksgiving and praise.
An
agnostic boyfriend wanted to better understand my religious devotion, so I
suggested that we read a psalm each day on our own, conferring occasionally.
Soon into the exercise, he good-naturedly but definitively expressed dismay at
the texts. He said something like, “I expected a more uplifting experience, but
there’s a lot of vengeance and wrath.”
A
retired church member whose lifelong partner died was about to go on his first
trip without him. I suggested we pray the psalms together, one each day, as he
travelled. Afterward, he said he felt less alone, knowing I was praying the
psalms with him.
That’s
a gift of the Psalms, that praying them, we feel less alone. Those who wrote
the psalms were imperfect, much like us. They didn’t know everything, but they
had feelings about everything. And, like us, they had multiple situations and
events to have feelings about, some good, even great, some bad, even evil. They
reflect the human range of experiences and emotions.
They
are like us, but perhaps unlike us, they are willing to express even their uglier
aspects. They are not pretending to “have it all together.” They are willing to
offer their broken spirits to God, to one another, to us. They are the original
12 Step meeting, the first confessors, the first monastics using prayer as a
place of transformation.
As
much as they, like us, might pray that God will “fix” things, they understand
repeatedly their need to hope in God, to trust in God, to witness the beauty
and wonder of creation, from the heavens to the earth. And they give us
wonderful images and metaphors for God: a good shepherd, a mother’s lap, the
rising sun of justice.
For
centuries, monastic communities have prayed the psalms during their daily
multiple prayer services. My first real taste of that was visiting the
Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross at their Mt. Calvary Retreat House in the
foothills above Santa Barbara, California. Over the years of my occasional
retreats there, I found peace joining them in the reciting or chanting of the
psalms. The brief silence between each line gave the words a chance to sink in,
as one might pause after any line of poetry. And saying or chanting the words
myself and with others gave the psalms an altogether different resonance than
reading them silently on my own.
In
praying the psalms, if we can’t identify with a particular mood or condition in
the words, we might consider those in the world who are experiencing that mood
or condition, praying with them or on their behalf. That makes the psalms at
least one more way in which we realize we are not alone.
At
the risk of offering a mere tautology: that the psalms are directed at the self
and others and God makes them a resource of reflection and contemplation: an
opportunity for dialogue with ourselves, with others, and with God.
The
psalm that got me through my toughest times is the psalm divided between Psalm
42 and 43 that begins, “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul
for thee, O God.” The psalmist was prevented from going to God’s house, perhaps
by illness, but the longing presented reminded many of us in the LGBT community
of the church’s exclusion.
More
than once I have prayed with the psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, and
renew a right spirit within me” and “Restore to me the joy of thy salvation.”
And,
during an extreme and extended period of multiple griefs, Psalm 73 spoke of my
experience:
My heart grew embittered,my affections dried up,I was stupid and uncomprehending,a clumsy animal in your presence.Even so, I stayed in your presence,you grasped me by the right hand;you will guide me with advice,and will draw me in the wake of your glory.Psalm 73:21-24 (NJB)
“Even
so, I stayed in your presence” became my mantra and my discipline that year,
else I would have been lost.
My
favorite psalm for contemplation when leading a retreat is 131, whose key
mantra is, “I hold myself in quiet and silence, like a little child in its mother’s
arms” (NJB).
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