Tags
comfort, God, God acts, God speaks, God's voice, Joyce Rupp, praise, pray, psalm 16, Stephen Mitchell, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
Feeling a need for inspiration I pulled out the book, Prayer Seeds, by Joyce Rupp this morning. I wanted to hear and see something that would speak of hope or certainty to some deep place in my heart with the hope that it would do the same for others. I read a lot of Sister Joyce’s prayers, all lovely and appropriate for many occasions or seasons. This is, however, a season that we might call “out-of-time” so I needed to look further. At the top of page 167, there was a quote from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of selected psalms. It read:
Unnamable God, I feel you with me at every moment. You are my food, my drink, my sunlight and the air I breathe. (Psalm 16)
This could have been enough, I suppose, but then I thought, “What about people who are not feeling God at every moment these days?” so I found a selection of Mitchell’s psalm translations at another place on the internet. I feel a need to write two of them here as sort of a stream of consciousness: in on-going sentences rather than the traditional psalmody form, as if the speaker were walking a path while thinking/speaking. I don’t know why that seems important but I hope Stephen Mitchell would forgive this diversion from his work. It is my best offering for today.
God acts within every moment and creates the world with each breath. God speaks from the center of the universe, in the silence beyond all thought. Mightier than the crash of a thunderstorm, mightier than the roar of the sea, is God’s voice silently speaking in the depths of a listening heart. (Psalm 93)
Even in the midst of great pain, Lord, I praise you for that which is. I will not refuse this grief or close myself to this anguish. Let shallow people pray for ease: “Comfort us; shield us from sorrow.” I pray for whatever you send me, and I ask to receive it as your gift. You have put a joy in my heart greater than all the world’s riches. I lie down trusting the darkness, for I know that even now you are here. (Psalm 4)
I believe that I understand at this moment what Thomas Merton wrote at dawn on a day a half-century ago about waking up. It is totally silent inside my house; everyone is sleeping still or again. (The coffee is made so someone was up before sunrise.) Outside is a different story. The mourning doves punctuate the conversation that is constant and loud – some would say cacophonous – among all the other birds large and small. And through it all the rooster reigns, splitting the silence with a voice that carries to the river and back again calling us all to wakefulness. “It is like the first morning of the world,” Merton writes, “when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom, awoke from nonentity and knew her…” Only in silence, I think, is it possible to have such an experience. And so I will dress and go into the day, carrying with me the pure sounds of praise in the natural world, hoping to know the wakefulness that is available to me this day.
Today’s lectionary offers us the shortest of psalms for response to the first reading. Ancient Songs Sung Anew gives a good idea for a spiritual practice using this text, saying that since it is one of the most universal in its meaning, “it could rightly be said by almost any person from any nation on earth.” Here’s the psalm, the challenge and the rest of the commentary.
Sometimes virtual travel is almost as good as being there. So it was last evening when a large rowdy band of Christians walked up a hill in Stonington, Maine and was transported from St. Mary’s Church to the chapel at Taizé, France to worship God in song. Not unlike Stonington, Taizé is a tiny town with a stable population of just under 200 people. in the summer, however, over 100,000 people, most of them young pilgrims, descend on Taizé to sing and serve in what becomes for them a spiritual homecoming.