Psalms: finding your voice
Can you talk to God? How? What is okay to say and not say? Can you really be honest?
The Psalms show us. On Wednesdays at 6pm this Lent you can see for yourself. It's okay to feel what you're feeling. It's okay to express what you're feeling. Even to God. The Psalms can help you find your voice. The Psalms can help you be heard. They can help you hear yourself, and witness with God life's highs and lows. With the Psalms, you can know that you are not alone.
The Psalms are poetry. Songs. Many things Jesus said are from the Psalms. The Psalms were ancient when Jesus learned them. Many Psalms say they are for or of David, Israel's second, very human king. We can't know for sure if or which are David's, but the Bible says David was a shepherd-musician before becoming king. People of faith have been singing and praying the Psalms for many, many generations. They handed them on to us as a rich inheritance. In the Psalms we can hear their very personal voices of gratitude, despair, anger and vengence, hope, fear, joy.
Richard Rohr says great suffering and great love are the only two things that can really change us. The Psalms give voice to both, and in them we can find words for own our suffering and love.
Scholar Walter Brueggemann puts names to three broad kinds of psalms.
- Psalms of Orientation
- Psalms of Disorientation
- Psalms of Reorientation
When you listen to the psalms on Sundays or on Wednesdays this Lent, how will you know what kinds they are?
Orientation psalms say, "Praise God! God is good!"
Disorientation psalms say, "This is terrible! Where are you, God? Save me!" or "I really messed up! Forgive me, God! Change me so I don't mess up again!"
Reorientation psalms say, "Praise God! God saved me from that terrible thing! God was so merciful to me!"
Orientation, Disorientation, and Reorientation aren't neat and tidy categories. Some psalms defy simple categorization or could fit in more than one. These categories are more poetry that can help us hear psalms for what they are. And hear ourselves for who we are and what we're experiencing now. And raise our bold and honest voice to God.
For example, these are disorienting times! Listen to Psalms of Disorientation!
The wisdom of these psalms is: the way to Hope is through Lament. "Lament" means "to mourn aloud" or "to express sorrow, mourning, or regret for often demonstratively" or "to regret strongly." Lament is the opposite of much so-called commonsense, but it is what disorientation psalms invite us into.
The Psalms show that there is no getting over it. There is only giving voice to it, until God has changed it into joy and gratitude. Forgetting, ignoring, belittling, pretending, silencing, and scolding don't work in the long run. Feel it. Express it. Let yourself be heard, by God and/or God's people. Or at least let yourself hear yourself. And if you can't find your own words, borrow the psalms.
During one hard time in my life, every morning for months, I read and reread Psalm 13. God used that psalm to heal me. I used it like a crutch. It got me through.
When we find our voice, we find what Brene Brown calls strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts. Strong backs because we take courage and can stand firm and take risks. Soft fronts because we are neither attacking or defensive, but open. Wild hearts because we are free to become who we are becoming and to go where we are being lead. Not everyone is ready for us to be strong, soft, and wild. But so many others need us to be strong, soft, and wild. Even now there are people seeing you and your life like a psalm, helping them find their voice and their own strong back, soft front, and wild heart.
The medieval Persian Muslim mystical poet, Hafiz, wrote:
The small woman
Builds cages for everyone
She
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck her head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners
The Psalms are keys. What will they unlock for you?
Thanks be to God.
Pastor Clark Olson-Smith