The Psalms

As a child, I would close my eyes and allow my finger to drop on the scripture that God wanted me to read. In times of need God’s revelations leaped off the pages of the PSALMS. The PSALMS gave me the poetry of the vastness of creation and the concentration of human longing. With the wail of a mother giving birth, the PSALMS cry out in joyous song. With the heartbeat of every person thrown into exile, the PSALMS take us home again.

I was born into a southern Baptist family, raised in a Jewish community, adopted by Franciscans and rediscovered God in a Dakota sweat lodge. But as Mark Twain writes, “travel is fatal to prejudice,” and so it is when one journeys through comparative translations of religious text.

What is the difference between lacking and wanting? What is the difference between justice and righteousness? What is the difference between enemy and tormentor? What is the difference between forever and long years? Each question brings us closer to the community of God. Through discussion we find each other, delighting in the span of God’s net.

My mother would sing the PSALMS to us at bed time; consoling us by affirming the presence of God in our every sleeping and waking hour. Now, with the same breath, I sing for my children. One night, while singing with my three year old daughter in a canoe beneath a full moon, she said, “Daddy, look at all the angels. Just look at all the angels.”

As my grandmother underlined in PSALMS 139 of her Bible, given to me at her death, ‘the night shall be light about me.’ Surely it is so.

I give thanks with all of my heart

I give thanks with all of my mind

In the presence of angels I sing

Calling out to you one more time.