Preparing to Pray the Psalms

 

Yesterday, I introduced you to your new friend, Hermann Gunkel and his classic categorization of Psalms.  Today, I want you to meet Walter Brueggemann who says that Psalms have a pattern and repeated refrain.  Psalms invite us into a cycle of orientation to disorientation to reorientation.  One Psalm describes the world with a stable structure that stands the storms of life and the very next Psalm can describe the bruises and brokenness that no amount of superglue could fix.  Only to keep reading and find the very next Psalm may sing with gusto to the whole world God is still forming and fashioning.  The Psalms, like all good poetry, tell a story.  Brueggemann says that Psalm 1 describes an orientation ~ a way of being in the world like a tree planted by a stream.  Then, turn to Psalm 72 or 88, where everything is going to you know where in a handbasket.  The world has collapsed into chaos.  Then, turn to Psalm 100 or 150 where we praise for the sake of praise ~ no specific reason is given or even needed. 

 

I encourage you to read the above three Psalms (1, 72 or 88, 100 or 150) ~ where are you finding solid ground to stand right now like Psalm 1?  For me, one place is in worship and in daily reading the Psalms.  Where does life individually and communally feel not just like shifting sand but sinking down into the depts/pitt?  For me, it is when I turn on the news.  And where do I long to praise God for no reason?  For me, it is when I am in creation.

 

I pray you will begin to sense that people of faith have always lived in the messy middle of some parts/rooms of the house called, “your life” are in a good place, some are broken worse than Humpty Dumpty, some meaningful moments move us to a mystery we can never fully understand but stand amid/among God’s presence.  May you sense the Sacred that heard our ancestors sing the Psalms and will listen as we join our voices next week.