Why I STILL Pray the Psalms
Reflections on Feb 1st—-St Brigid’s Day.
Dr. Gary Straub.
Meadow@ St. Matthews
Well, it’s St Brigid’s Day, who, w/ Columba & Patrick, complete the famed trio of Irish saints. Her 451 AD birth certificate is lost, but her haloed hagiography certifies a menagerie of patronages, including her own legendary turning water into beer. While her signatory relic remains St Brigid’s cross, she greatly favored the Psalms. I am STILL praying the Psalms myself. I plow thru Psalms monthly, yet never quite get to gospels or epistles. I remain in their debt because folks have prayed these ancient psalms for 20 centuries. Good company. Where— besides Psalms—do you find folks who strip off their soul’s old varnish and sand all the way down to bare wood?
Some church folk say Psalms are just “happy talk.” Ever notice how ‘happy’ changes in the presence of suffering? Ever spent time around the covid crowd quietly strangling to breathe? Bed-side trauma deeply scars the survivors too. Helen Keller was right: “In the world there is much suffering… and also much overcoming of it!” The Psalms speak directly into our frantic times of quiet desperation.
150 Psalms boast biblical status and bear the weight of full human anguish. Psalms frame my daily circumstance with superlative candor. They spill our guts. When injustice upsets the right; Psalms are ready to fight & smite! Their fierceness is a far cry from trotting out pretentious pieties to play patty-cake. Beneath a Psalm’s soothing sound, rumbles a bellowing volcano. That giant scraping sound? The creaking of tectonic plates shifting under the universe, as our existence erupts in the unutterable anguish of our being fully human—for which there is no known cure. In the spirit realm, this is “infrastructure collapse.” Don’t believe me? I have a bridge in Baltimore…you might be interested in! Actually, our crumbling bridges collapse a little closer to home.
Many mornings I read Psalms and ask: what am I supposed to DO when I don’t KNOW what to do? To whom shall I turn when the vicissitudes of life beat me down? Bend me out of shape? Bewilder as well as be-devil me? When I am broken on the wheel of life—what then? How about moments when, to my utter horror, all my considerable powers are turned against me while turned inside out? Some days, I’m riding higher than Humpty Dumpty, and then—play the fool— and fall. When I am left—totally bereft—when life tumbles in—what then?
Try sticking your nose in The Book! Figure out what day it is and read the corresponding Psalm. Keep adding # 30 until you run out of psalms. Today is the 1st— so Ps 1, then 31, then 61, then 91, & 121. This is practice the powerful Protestant principle: ‘sola scriptura.’ Keep reading till you are found by God’s prevenient grace— the grace that goes before us —preparing the way for all God yet has before us. Wherever I find an illuminating phrase in scripture, I hold its shimmering image w/in my heart. When illuminations arise: just rest—and be blessed. Don’t try to wring heavy meaning out of the Psalms. Don’t bother to overthink inspiration. Don’t demand to “get something out” of this Psalm. Don’t work it. Let Light arise, and find you.
Some mornings, I read my daily dose of 5 psalms and nothing happens! What then? I close the Book, open my heart, say “thank you Lord!” —and go about my day. Illumination seldom operates on clock time; that’s why we call it “DIVINE reading!”
