Psalms...

For different reasons the Psalms are becoming quite a recurring area of reflection / study for me at the moment. I've been working my way through a course in the Ignation Spiritual exercises with the help of a spiritual director over the last few months which has encouraged a fair bit of reading of and reflection on various Psalms. During the Ridley prayer retreat last weekend one of our staff gave some of us what I found to be a really inspiring session on praying with the Psalms. Also one of my MA modules this term is at the moment focusing on the Psalms and different ways in which they have been understood, interpreted and used down the years.

Before arriving at Ridley, coming from quite a non-liturgical background, I had relatively minimal knowledge and experience of the Psalms - and it would be fair to say that at times over my 2 1/2 years here I've found that the daily recital of them in Morning Prayer can be slightly monotonous, and so not always approached them with the right attitude and given the words the attention they deserve. But I'm realising more and more how much there is in there that can connect with where I'm at at any given time and express so powerfully what I want to say to God at certain times. To take an extreme eg Psalm 22:1 'My God, my God why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me..' There is so much to encourage: Psalm 139 'O Lord, you have searched me and known me...', Psalm 136 'O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever...'; so much to challenge: Psalm 133 'How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity...', Psalm 127 'Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain...'

I really feel that they are enriching my life greatly at the moment; and that they could be of so much benefit for Christians generally - both individually and communally, if only used and taught more widely - but creatively and imaginatively!!

On a lighter note, in my MA module reading I came across this 'modern translation' of Psalm 23 written, I'm surmising, as a bit of a tongue-in-cheek dig at attempts to modernise liturgical language. It appeared in the Telegraph titled David Lyric Two-Three. Makes me chuckle:

The Lord and I are in a shepherd/sheep situation, and I am in a position of negative need. He prostrates me in a green belt grazing area; he conducts me directionally parallel to non-torrential aqueous liquid. He returns to original satisfaction, levels my psychological make-up; he switches me on to a positive behavioural format for maximal prestige of his identity.
It should indeed be said that notwithstanding the fact that I make ambulatory progress through the umbrageous inter-hill mortality slot, terror-sensations will not be instantiated within me due to para ethical phenomena. Your pastoral walking aid and quadruped pickup unit introduce me into a pleasurific mood-state.
You design and produce a nutriment-bearing furniture-type structure in the context of non-cooperative elements; you act out a head-related folk ritual employing vegetable extract; my beverage utensil experiences a volume crisis.
It is an ongoing deductible fact that your inter-relational empathetical and non-vengeance capabilities will retain me as their target focus for the duration of my non-death period: and I will possess tenant rights in the housing unit of the Lord on a permanently open-ended time basis.