"Psalms"

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 29^th of April, 2001

Mark Belletini, Minister First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening Words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
in this common house of praise and song
to celebrate once again that we are,
that everything is, and becomes, until it ends,
and that despite our lack of final answers
the orange sun still rises and sets,
and the stars chant their light in the indigo sky,
that we might notice and yield our awe and amen.
Love, open the pages of this hour like a songbook,
and therein inscribe our names as notes
in an everlasting psalm of life, justice and joy.

(assembly) And may our reason and our passion keep us true to ourselves, true to each other,
and true to those shared visions of what we can together become…

Call to Silence [Next] [back to top]

Psalm: (A fantasia on Psalm 1 in the Tanak)

Blest is the one who is planted like a strong tree
by the river of life,
who is not ashamed to blossom in season,
who is patient enough to bear fruit in season,
and whose roots run deep enough
to remain planted firm during a storm;
whose trunk is pliable enough
to bend gracefully in the wind's fury.

Blest is the one who takes time
to sit in the silence and let moments pass
without clutching at them to make them stay.

Blest is the one whose day-to-day
moments flow like the river of music,
like a current of lyric joy climbing a clarinet,
like an ecstasy floating off the end of a flute,
like a psalm dancing in the throat of a singer,
like the hand of an interpreter leaping to meaning,
or the feet of a dancer tapping fresh ecstasies.

Come Silence, flow like music,
flow like the river of life,
flow like time into the future.

bell sound and silence

In the Silence we note all the joys and sorrows
that befall us, the celebrations of births and
the marking of death's memorial.

We gather the names of those we miss, those
we love, those who love us, those who challenge us,
and name them aloud in this place
or in the deeper places of our heart as a summons
to celebrate the communion of human relationships
that holds us forever in a web of wonder.

naming

Blest is the Love that moves us.
Blest is the Silence that holds us.
Blest is the Music that transforms us.

The First Reading [Next] [back to top]
comes from Mark Twain's classic of American literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1884. It may be the shortest reading I've ever chosen. It's such a simple sentence I will ask Earl to read it twice, so you can savor it.

"You can't pray a lie."

The Second Reading [Next] [back to top]
is a translation of an incredible poem by the Polish poet Anna Kamienska, about which the Nobel Laureate Milosc was not able to find much information, unfortunately. But the poem itself speaks volumes.

A Prayer That Will Be Answered

Lord, let me suffer much and then die.
Let me walk through the silence
and leave nothing behind, not even fear.

Make the world continue.
Let the ocean kiss the sand just as before.
Let the grass stay green,
so that the frogs can hide in it,
and so someone can bury his face in it,
and sob out his love.

Make the day rise brightly
as if there were no more pain.
And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee's head.

Homily: Psalms [back to top]

Our choir this morning, with the admirable musical skills of Les Kleen and Myra Hine is going to do John Rutter's Psalmfest, an absolutely beautiful set of eight of the psalms. Rutter himself is not a believer, but he set the psalms in the Anglican way, with the Trinitarian doxology (Glory Be to the Father etc.) added to the end of some of them. This is Anglican liturgical practice. For Rutter, however, the sounds of the English words have lost their meaning and become music itself.

The word "psalm" is a Greek translation of the the Hebrew words Tehillah" which simply means song, especially a sung prayer. All of these psalms were originally sung, not read, but today, many poets write psalms and prayers based on the concrete imagery of the psalms…even if they are not Christian or Jewish or "believers" of any kind. I think of Paul Goodman, the non-believing social justice prophet of the sixties, who, when asked about his religious life, produced a number of prayers to God and Father that he had been crafting all his life. I think of the poems of Wendell Berry and May Sarton, addressed to Love, as I, indeed address my own prayers.

To express wonderful and systematic theology, you see, is not the intent of prayers. The expression of human feelings is.

All the feelings.

Even the one we don't like.

Sometimes the people who put the psalms in the Bible are criticized for their choices. There are so many infantile expressions in the psalms, so many cries of what looks like self-pity, desires for vengeance, paranoid abandonment, and over-the-top rage. Religious liberals, especially, often look down on such grandiose outcries.

Oh, we can use scholarship to realize that the psalms as we have them are all constructs borrowed from all over the Middle East, an anthropological collection, if you will. Some are borrowed from Egypt, others from Assyrian poetry. Some clearly come from the pen of a single author, even, in some cases, a man named David. If there was a King David, that is.

But scholarship only tempers irritation about the psalms for a short spell.

But then I think of my life, and how wild my emotions are sometimes. I look relatively serene on the outside, as most of us do, but psychologists who talk of the "inner child" are not all wrong. There is part of me that does desire vengeance when people hurt me, that does want to rant and rave and complain. And I don't think that I am alone in this.

People say to me, "But psalms are a form of prayer, and prayer is baloney. It's asking God for things, and I am not sure that God is some Disc Jockey in the sky playing requests, if there is a God anyway."

Of course. But, as I said, the point of prayer is not some correct theology, but rather, the expression of what is really true inside us. As Mark Twain said, "You cannot pray a lie." He was not fond of religion, of course, and knew that many so called prayers are lies. But I think he respected the idea of telling the truth, however soaked in tough feelings, candidly, and this is what prayer is about. Pray to Love, to Truth, to God, to the Void, even to your self, I don't care. But get it out and be honest.

You can word your prayers so that they can be "answered," of course, whether you think a great deal of God or not. In fact, the wording of prayers needs to take part in the general honesty of the idea. Take Kamienska's great prayer.

"Lord, let me suffer much and then die."

Do you think, for one minute, that prayer will not be answered?

But the psalms mean a great deal to me because their honest wrestling with feelings strikes me as a good model for good prayer.

I wrote some psalms of my own once. I wrote them, not for myself, but for a woman in my former church.

Her name was Rita. I loved her very much. She was a member of my Ministry Committee, and a very fine church member. She also had been married for a time, had two fine children, and had been living as a single woman since her divorce. She was a teacher much appreciated.

One day she stopped coming to church. You tend to notice such things of the busier types. So I called her to find out what was up. She told me she was not feeling very well, had trouble walking, trouble focusing her eyes, things like that.

This sounded very serious to me, so I asked her about what her doctor had been saying to her.

She said, "Oh, I have gone to the doctor many times, but whenever he tells me what's wrong, I cannot seem to understand it."

"Oh, well, in that case," I said to her, "why don't I go with you to see the doctor and translate what he says. I have been doing parish work for many years, and have come to know about a lot of medical terms, and how they translate in plain English."

"You would do that?" she asked.

"Of course, Rita."

So I went to her next check up and waited until the doctor called me in. Then he said this to Rita, word for word: "Rita, it's like I have been telling you. There is nothing more we can do. The cancer has spread everywhere, and it's just a matter of time, a month or two at best. I am sorry. We can, however, make you comfortable, so you won't suffer too much. I am so terribly sorry."

That seemed pretty clear to me. So we walked out of the office and Rita turned to me and said:

"I can't understand a word he was saying to me."

I almost fell down. I have rarely felt so powerless. I didn't know what to say. Her high-school-age children also felt powerless, and did not know how to get her to face up to her situation so they could talk with her about real things…things of the heart, as she was dying.

Now Rita loved the prayers I wrote for Sunday morning. She always commented on the images or metaphors I used. So I told her I would make her a personal prayer book, a book of psalms written just for her.

And, here, minus the pictures and photos I included, are the psalms I wrote.

First Psalm: A Morning Prayer

O You Who may not even be a you,
I often find it hard to pray.
I suppose part of it is that
I really don't imagine that You
are some sort of Santa Claus in the sky,
and frankly, I hate to ask for things anyway.
I've always been pretty independent.
I'd rather you just pour Yourself
into my life and ailing body
without me having to ask for it.
I'd like to be cured of this crazy illness
that dogs my tracks.
I'd like to be able to walk again easily,
and read without strain.

I want my health back,
my capacity for self care.
I'd like to walk with my head held high
in the fresh air.
I'd like to have long talks
with my son and daughter about life and love,
and long talks with both of them
where I say everything I have ever wanted to say.

But I just don't know for sure
how this prayer might work
or even if it works.
I have had enough disappointments
in my life to want to face any more.

So you'll understand if I am bit hesitant around prayer.
But I guess it's worth the price of admission
just to be able to say clearly what I want.

So with that, I'll sign off for now,
and get on with the day ahead of me.

Second Psalm: An Evening Prayer

O Love Most High, Most Deep,
Most Abundant,
as I lie here in my bed,
I think about the day.
Just today. Not past days.

I do not think much about tomorrow
either, for that is still many precious
moments away from now,
and now is when You live and I live.

The Great Temple, the homestead of tomorrow, has not yet been built.

For a while, at least,
I yield my disappointment
that I cannot know what part of the future I shall know,
the future of my life and my children's lives.

I do not know if I shall see
their hair frost with age or no.

I no longer think I shall dance
at my daughter's wedding in June.

And so I turn to the unmistakable
reality of this room, with its walls
its sheets, its chairs and flowers.

Here is the world of my life,
the edges of my dominion for a time.

The night shall drift into my eyes
as it has so many other nights,
and in my dreams,
those gifts that give the finite
a feeling of forever,
I can walk still in them,
and maybe even fly a bit.

Thanks for the gift of now.

Yesterday and tomorrow are, after all,
but poor angels which attend
to the bright divinity of this very second.

Come, sleep with me, O Love,
and soothe me with burdenless rest.

Third Prayer: A Psalm to God

O God, sometimes
the antique word of Your name
still has some comfort in it.

I know that many have used this word
to curse, to bolster up their excuses
for violence and harm,
but I also remember
that some have walked with the mystery of You
without embarrassment,
shaping a sweeter image of You,
by reaching out to the sick,
or embracing the poor,
or writing a poem that heals hearts.

O God, now however, I want an angry You.
I cannot but spill over, and cry out with rage,
"Smash the disease that wrecks me,
tear it out of me,
dash the heads of every sick cell
against the rock of Your impossibility.

Turn back their arrogant attacks
with a club fashioned from my rage.

And, if this is not possible,
then let your arms hold me close
in my dreams,
in my inward imaginings,
the very parts of me
that most resemble You.

Hold me close; let me sense not
my alienation from the Great Mystery
of this life, but rather,
let me sense my intimacy with you,
the Greater Mystery
that anything is at all.

O, comfort me with friends and tears,
turn me toward the best of me,
and bid me let up on myself,
and love myself more than I do.

O God, I say your most ancient name:
Come, O Love.

Fourth Psalm: A Gloria

Glory be to You,
Great Mystery of All!

I remember the brightness
of every star I ever saw,
and know that my remembrance
and every flash of light
shed by those distant miracles
proclaims the Glory,
no matter my words,
no matter my silence,
no matter my beliefs or unbeliefs.

Glory be to You,
unity binding all things,
source of my link to star, stone,
starfish and song and solace.

You are the source of my tether
to wild Jesus and Buddha gone before me,
to my grandparents gone before me,
to my grandchildren, not yet born,
to my great grandchildren
not yet even imagined.

You link all that has ever been,
Is, or will be, in a great mystery
named me.

Therefore, glory be to You,
Universal Love, in excelsis!

Even when I have been hard on myself,
friends still come.

Even when I doubt myself,
and my patience falters with my hope,
they arrive.

Even when all that befalls me now
fills me with a thousand things
I have no power to express,
still they come,
and still my own heart fills with
loving-kindness for all.

Gloria tibi, Amor in terra!

Fifth Psalm: Laud for Life

O Gift of Life,
I open you, on this my birthday,
when, like every day,
I am born anew in the recognition
that life is, and I know that it's for me.

I tear off the gaudy wrapper
of expectation around you,
and rip off the ribbon of resentment.

I unfold the box,
and find therein the best memories
of my childhood,
and my playing, my teen years,
my loving and marriage, my teaching at school,
my parenting, my divorce,
my long fight against
all that befalls me now.

And I hold these gifts
up to your light, O Sun of Life,
like a handful of jewels
blessed with many facets.

Your light is so bright
that if there are any cracks in the jewel,
any fragileness, any cloudiness,
I cannot see such.

O Gift of Life, full of caprice
and strange surprises, I say it clearly.

Even in this miserable bed,
I am alive like all who are alive.

And great is the sum of the gifts
you have given me and to all people.

I will never turn from your gift of life,
accepting every moment of it
until the time comes when the gift
no longer comes.

But that time is not now.
Nameless source of Life!

Ah, I am still astonished that I live. Thanks.

Sixth Psalm: The Hallowing of an Accepting Silence

The lights are coming, I know it.

In the dark silence of coming night,
they are coming, those constellations
by which the wise may safely steer.

I know I will lose myself in the silence,
and its unimaginable lights,
as I have for a moment lost myself
in this prayer.

See? For the length of this sentence
at least, I remember not my sorrow.

For the length of this sentence at least,
I yield all my fears and loneliness.

The silent night is coming
with bright lights I still cannot see,
for it is day yet, and, even in this bed,
I have not lost the power
to be amazed by the glory of the day.

But as there is more delight, I hear,
more awe, more sheer amazement
under the dome of night's heaven
than in the glaring, blinding,
too busy day, so let it also be
for my own personal night of the soul
that it shall one day yield more
guiding stars than the garish day
has ever given or even power to reveal.

Let the majesty of those stars
melt me in the crucible of awe
that lifts me up from myself.

Pour me out like liquid silver
into a vessel most shaped like hope,
that I, too, might reflect all this light
that shines in the night,
and guides others on their way.

I shall soon become a star that leads others
in beauty and peace one day.

And now, for a time,
I yield my fears, my sorrows,
and my day dreams
to the night, silent and bright
and peaceful,
yes, peaceful,
like the sound of crickets
in a wheat field bronzed by the moon,
where I might dream I recline on a quilt
under the summer stars at midnight,
drinking in the sweetness of it all
with a joy I never imagined.

The night is coming.

But the beauty of the stars
shall amend my fears,
and restore me to the self
that is deeper than my days.

Seventh Psalm: Benedictions

Blessed is every breath I take.
Blessed is every fear I face.
Blessed is every robin's nest.
Blessed is every bough of spruce.
Blessed is every shell on the beach.

Blessed is the lap of the waves.
Blessed is the droop of a willow.
Blessed is the sweep of the prairie.
Blessed is the gable of my house.
Blessed are my family and friends.

Blessed is my love, the depth of my strength which is deeper than my present brokenness.
Blessed is the honesty of my fears, my fierce love of life;
Blessed is Love that forever remembers my future, and trembles with my tremors.
Blessed is the courage that I did not know I had.

Blessed is my desire that suffering should end.
Blessed is the song of life one of whose notes I am.

Blessed is the beauty of it all.
Blessed is my thanksgiving.

And blessed is my dream of peace. Amen.

Closing Psalm:

How wondrous the stars above us,
the work of a thousand million years of Yes.

How moving the glory of the human condition,
the love and loss, the dreams and shattered dreams,
the triumphs and miseries, the yearning for peace.

How blest are the comings and goings
of the children of humanity,
the work of their hands from seed to harvest,
the celebrations of their lives at the feasting table
with joy and gladness.

Blest is the name of the Nameless
that embraces us as we arrive and as we leave. Amen.

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