There are days, more often than not that I believe the best of me is yet to come and there are days, far too few that I feel that I am letting go and I am I know I am exactly in the right place at the right time doing the right thing ( oh -and my hair looks great and I have my favorite white blouse and great black shoes on). Today was a more often than not day but it didn't start out that way or end that way.
And so after ten years, I still do. Because in the beginning I didn't know how and still don't on most days. In the beginning I just wanted to make sense of it all and to master it. It is a mystery to me and everyone else I suspect. And I would be willing to hazard a guess that you feel as if you fail at it most of the time. And I would be willing to bet that on more than one occasion you wondered - does this really matter? And so after I saw a movie about Martin Luther, who is said to have prayed the Psalms so often, he had them all committed to memory, thought I would try. And I thought maybe by the time I was 90, I would have them committed to memory too.
The Book of Psalms is an incredible gift of God to the Church. Regularly singing the entire book of Psalms is the spiritual practice I would stake my life on. Their uniqueness lies in while most of Scripture portrays the history of Israel from either a God’s-eye or birds-eye view, the Psalm give us the inside perspective of how Israel experienced their life before God, and simultaneously invites us into the personal experience of that very Story.
Even as far back as the Desert Fathers and Mothers (4th century), it was common for a monk to pray the entire book of Psalms every single day. As St. Benedict established in the sixth century, it became standard practice for the Psalms to be recited once per week. I’ll tell you, that when I did it the first time, I discovered how completely unfamiliar I was with the Psalms. Many passages, I felt like I had never heard or read before.
The Psalms are rather strange in the light of contemporary Christianity. The Psalms represent to us the most concrete and expansive expression of a truly Biblical Spirituality and it was the prayer book Jesus used. In all likelihood, he had the entire book of Psalms memorized as well from youth. The Spirituality of the Psalms is not an “I’ll retreat into my inner life because there nothing in the world matters” but rather a much more risky partnership with the compassionate God. A God who comes very close to us on this earth that is full of calamity but imbibed with meaning by the virtue of God who created it and continues to redeem it. This spirituality, though very much full of hope (and indeed precisely because it is), never allows us to “soar above the vale of tears” but again and again brings us into a suffering resistance to the violence, evil, injustice and death that so marks our age. I don't know about you - but that is the only God I can live with. There is not a human experience that is not mentioned in the Psalms. They are full of feeling and the human experience. Its pain and joy. The Psalmists seem to engage a God who welcomes dialogue and they seem to demand answers.
And that is why I still do- ten years later. Because I don't know how but there's power but it is on your knees. I don't know how God gives the power but it is on your knees. I don't why but the love that changes you is on your knees.
And so every now and again I will join people in Evening Prayer or Evensong. And admist walls washed as white as wool, admist candles burning, admist the color streaming in from the setting sun as it shone through the stained glass, in front of a simple wooden cross, the four or five of us recited words that Jesus recited. Words that were prayed by every disciple. Words that were prayed by the first century church. We prayed that ancient Greek hymn Phos Hilaron, that is dated to the second century. We said a creed that is dated before the Nicene Creed. Ancient words, eternal meaning.
I was not raised Anglican and I had never held a Book of Common Prayer until ten years ago. I had only prayed Rite II before tonight and was not familiar with the Cranmer way but there is power on your knees. And I was reminded that by falling to your knees is the only way to rescue the fallen. And when you meet someone at the level of prayer you meet them for all eternity.
And ten years later, even though I don't understand, even though I have NOT memorized the entire book of Psalms yet, even though I don't often feel God near, even though it can seem foreign to me at times, even though people look at me strange when I mention it, it continues to save me. And I always need prayers wiser than my own...
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