Praying with the Psalms and the Natural Turn
Welcome to a new year!
You are welcome just as you are!
I am so glad that you are here, listening and praying with us.
As you know, we pray with a lectionary which follows the liturgical calendar. A new cycle begins when we enter the season of Advent. This year, we are praying with Year B. If you are interested in an online version of the calendar, you may find a Revised Common Lectionary resource here.
Through 2024, we will be praying mostly with the assigned Psalm each week. The book of Psalms is an ancient book of poems and songs which bear witness to the human experience, both individual and collective. Communities pray, sing or chant these Psalms together to bring their voice and bear witness of a faithful and loving Creator who sees the depth and breadth of life shared together. Often this life is marked by tremendous tragedy, horror and suffering. Sometimes it’s filled with peace, contentment, hope and joy. It truly is a record of the vast human experience intersecting with the faithful, loving Creator.
One thing which I (Kim) love about praying with the Psalms is that they seem to give us permission to acknowledge our real lives and experience. Each verse is evidence of the writer’s search to find the best way to describe what they are experiencing inside. These descriptions come in the form of physical sensations, pictures, metaphors, gestures and sounds. They are essentially a collection of fresh felt senses. Sometimes the Psalmist’s words seem to match our experience when we search inside. Other times they point us in a general direction of the ways we are experiencing this real life in the real now. And sometimes we encounter a strong inner “NO” saying “that’s nothing like our experience!” As we linger with the Living Word, we begin to sense the ways the text is intersecting with our whole being. We notice our inner responses to this Living Word, and thus begins an opportunity to deepen in relationship with the One who made us. As we stay there, in a real and living relationship with God, we can notice the Spirit companioning us in all our thoughts, emotions and feelings. If we stay there, describing the ways life is for us now to Someone who is listening, we feel witnessed and these thoughts and feelings begin to naturally turn. They do not turn because we force them to turn. They turn because we feel heard, seen, known, accepted and understood just a bit and that builds trust. We relax just a little more into the expansive mystery of God with us.
We bear witness to the Psalmist experiencing this natural turn such as in Psalm 29, where the writer describes the voice of God as hovering, booming, shaking. Eventually the words turn to a sense of strength, peace and blessing. They do not turn because the songwriter has strong-willed himself to be trusting or unafraid while following a prayer recipe. The experience turns because the “way it really is” for the author is acknowledged, allowed to be, and companioned with just as it is. This way of being seems to create an opening for grace. Grace comes when it does and as it does and that brings the natural turn. Grace does not come by prodding or trying harder. When we can stay in the place of uncomfortable and vulnerable not knowing, we make room for Love and Grace to finds us. Gratitude, praise, and emerging trust will flow naturally from here.
It can be tempting to read and pray with the Psalms with an inner expectation that our need to be felt and seen and known will be met on the timeline of a metered poem. We do not know how long the Psalmist needed to express what was inside. What we do know is that the Psalms paused a lot (Selah) and they invited us to pause too. It’s in the pausing, sensing freshly, describing and staying with mystery that something new can come. New life can come from old life, old experience, old patterns. We can feel what we feel with a God who is with us and promises to make all things new. Perhaps it will not come on our timeline or in our hoped-for ways, yet it comes. And we bear witness to the signs of new life forming in one another.
Bless you as you begin again…listening and praying with the One who gazes at you with love, kindness and compassion.
Psalm 29 (NRSV)
Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name;
worship the Lord in holy splendor.
The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the Lord, over mighty waters.
The voice of the Lord is powerful;
the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon skip like a calf
and Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl
and strips the forest bare,
and in his temple all say, “Glory!”
The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.
May the Lord give strength to his people!
May the Lord bless his people with peace!
For Reflection and Prayer:
Was there a word, phrase or image which caught your attention you as you listened to or slowly read the text? Quietly savor this with Jesus.
Notice any felt sense that seems to emerge as you linger with this passage. It might come as a bodily feeling, emotion, metaphor, picture, gesture or sound. See if you can describe it and simply be with it with patient curiosity. Be open to whatever more might emerge.
Perhaps you might want to draw, color or journal your conversation.
As the time of prayer comes to a close, share some quiet moments with Jesus, simply resting safely in his presence.
Psalm 29 (Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill)
Give praise to the Beloved, O heavenly hosts,
Sing of Love’s glory and strength.
Exalt the glory of Love’s Name;
Adore the Beloved in holy splendor.
The voice of the Beloved is upon the waters;
Love’s voice echoes over the oceans and seas.
The voice of Love is powerful, majestic is the heart of Love.
The mercy of the Beloved breaks
the bonds of oppression,
shatters the chains of injustice.
Love invites all to the dance of freedom,
to sing the Beloved’s song of truth.
The voice of Love strikes with fire upon hearts of stone.
The voice of Love uproots the thorns of fear,
Love uproots fear in every open heart.
The voice of Love is heard in every storm,
and strips the ego bare;
And in the heart’s chapel, all cry,
“Peace and Glory forever!”
The Beloved lives in our hearts;
Love dwells with us forever.
May Love give strength to all people.
May Love bless all nations with peace.