Chewing on the Psalms

Here is an essay on Psalmody by Graham Kendrick, a British songwriter/worship leader whom I highly respect – and all the more after reading this.

Some quotes from the essay:

One of the strongest arguments for using the Psalms is both simple and profound – it was what Jesus did. The Psalms were Jesus' prayer book, songbook and meditation manual, and if he needed them how much more do we? The Christian community was early convinced that he continues praying them through us as we pray them: "we recite this prayer of the Psalm in Him, and He recites it in us." [Augustine].

"The Psalter knows that life is dislocated. No cover-up is necessary. The Psalter is a collection over a long period of time of the eloquent, passionate songs and prayers of people who are at the desperate edge of their lives" [Praying the Psalms, Walter Bruggemann, p10, Authentic media.]

How do we pray the psalms? One of the best ways is simply to read them out loud, but not in a detached, cerebral way. The book of Psalms begins with a promise that the person who meditates in the law of the Lord is like 'a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.' That is quite a promise. Meditation sounds like a purely mental activity, but according to Eugene Peterson:
"Meditate [hagah] is a bodily action; it involves murmuring and mumbling words, taking a kind of physical pleasure in making the sounds of the words, getting the feel of the meaning as the syllables are shaped by larynx and tongue and lips. Isaiah uses this word 'meditate' for the sounds that a lion makes over its prey [Isaiah 31:4]." [Eugene Peterson, Answering God]
The Psalms spring to life when we engage with them physically – try it!

This last is important: “taking a kind of physical pleasure in making the sounds of the words.” I submit that this is what we are doing in choral rehearsal when we work on the Psalms, and that the addition of music (and physical pleasure in making it) is a significant part of the spiritual benefit. The Psalms have always been primarily music to be sung, not just texts on a page.

Rehearsal of Psalmody is difficult. I normally put it at the beginning of the choral rehearsal while we are fresh, but even so it can be a challenge. Can we bring ourselves to the level of discipline – communal listening, care for intonation in the plainsong tones, shaping phrases, careful diction – that the Psalms demand of us? If we can, we are better prepared to rehearse the anthems on our list. And over time, we are perhaps better people from doing this work with diligence.

As long-time readers will know, I have been reading the Psalms in Hebrew for about three years when I pray the Office at home. Not singing them; I do not know how. Even more than in English, it seems impossible to read the texts without doing it aloud, or at least moving lips and tongue and whispering to make the beautiful strong consonants of the Language of God. At church, I mostly sing the Psalms from the Plainsong Psalter (Church Publishing, edited by James Litton), which follows the text of the 1979 American BCP. And of course we sing them as a choir at the Sunday Eucharist, and (to Anglican Chant) at our First Sunday Choral Evensongs. I would account the two methods of reading in Hebrew, or singing in English, to be equal in benefit for me, with reading in English a distant third.

I believe that the physicality of meditating on God's Word applies also to the rest of the Old and New Testaments. We would do well to read the Scriptures aloud whenever possible, and to do so from a translation that “reads well.” Not all of them do.

My favorite, which I never fail to mention given opportunity, is the Authorized/King James Version. But there may be others that would be suitable.

[Thanks to Fr. Tim who, if I remember rightly, linked to this essay in his blog a couple of years ago. I saw it in my list of bookmarks and re-read it today.]