Tasting The Psalms

Over the last couple weeks, I've been taking some time reading through the Psalms first thing in the morning. I've tried a couple morning rituals (ie Divine Hours, Sacred Space, etc.) and am continuing to explore different ways of praying. I haven't gotten super far yet, but it's been life giving. Basically I've been starting with a Psalm a day, reading through it and meditating on it, praying it back in my "own tongue". I've been using a couple tools as I've done this:

1) Robert Alter's "The Book of Psalms".


2) Eugene Peterson's "Answering God: The Psalms As Tools For Prayers"


Robert Alter is a biblical scholar and author who taught Hebrew and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, and has translated a lot of the Hebrew Scriptures. Alongside his translation are his commentaries on various passages, why they're hard to translate or understand, or shed some interesting light on words/phrases. I've enjoyed some of the poetic ways he's unfolded some of the psalms. Check it out if you get a chance.

I've also been reading through Eugene Peterson's "Answering God" and have been loving it. I read it a few years ago, but I'm blown away by the stuff I'm re-reading. I highly recommend it, even just for the first 5 chapters. The way he lays out the heart of the Psalms and even explaining the story & rhythm of the psalms is so helpful and encouraging. Here are a few of the quotes:

"All prayer is prayed in a story, by someone who is in the story. There are no storyless prayers. Story is to prayer what the body is to teh soul, the circumstances in which it takes palce. And prayer is to story what the soul is to the body, the life without which it would be a corpse. Prayers are prayed by people who live stories. Every life is a story. We are not always aware that we are living a story; often it seems more like a laundry list. But story it is."

Here's another:

"Spiritualized prayer is denatured prayer, prayer in which all the dirt and noise of ordinary life is boiled out. It is a prayer that cultivates exalted feelings and sublime thoughts. It is prayer that is embarrassed by the coarse subject matter that intrudes itself into most twenty-four hour periods, but takes great pleasure in aphorisms. It is escapist prayer, with scheduled flights to the empyrean. The psalm editors, knowing our weakness for these fantasies, use titles to tie the balloon of prayer to people in a story: for life is always and necessarily lived in detail, and the details are often inconvenient and regular."

I love this thought of story and how the psalm editors placed titles on 116 of the psalms because it reminds us that these prayers are connected to "place, time, and people". That should be a greatly encouraging thought. I'd love to keep on going, but need to get ready for class.

If you ready & pray through the psalms, what disciplines have been helpful for you to engage in meaningful, heartfelt ways? Books?