Singing the Songs
of Distress and Longing
On
Ash Wednesday, I came to work earlier than usual. I opened a Psalter[i] to Psalm 6, found a midi file for the tune ‘Rockingham (old)’, and
croaked my way through verses like this:
Have mercy,
Lord, for I am faint, My very bones in agony.
Come heal
me Lord, my anguished soul
Cries out, ‘How
long, O Lord, how long?’
That night, I went to Bethel AME, and with about
40 others, stepped forward and had ashes placed on my forehead in the sign of
the cross; ashes to remind me that from dust I was made and to dust I will
return.
Every morning now, as part of my Lenten devotion,
I arrive at my desk early, open my Psalter and sing. Every morning now my songs are cries for
mercy, pleas for healing, angry fist shaking to the sky rhymed accusations to
the Creator, affirmations of blessings past, hope for blessings yet to
come. These are the stuff of the Psalms
and the stuff of my heart as I face the spread of the cancer in me from my
lungs into my pelvis.
If your vision of Christian piety is a gentle
older woman, head bowed, hands pressed together, eyes closed, reciting, “The
Lord is my Shepard . . .” that’s a good start, and it’s not wrong by any means. But if you really decide to open a Bible and
start reading the Psalms for yourself, put on your seat belt first. The ride is plenty wild. The Psalmist accuses God of delaying action,
of being asleep at the wheel as his promises seem to go unfulfilled. One Psalmist, near death, asks just who the
heck does God think will praise Him if he is taken down to Sheol. Surely the dead don’t praise God eh? A friend of mine from my days in Toronto grad
school has an article in a theological journal. He writes, “In contrast
to the posture of unquestioning submission to God that informs spirituality in
many faith traditions, the Hebrew Bible assumes a stance of vigorous protest
towards God as normative”[ii] I think he’s on to something
that answers my needs far better than those who look at me sadly and say, “well,
I’m praying for God’s will”. My songs
are too full of anger and lament for that kind of docile piety. My songs are
the Psalms, full throated, deeply human cries for wholeness and blessing in the
midst of fears and uncertainty.
Long ago, the exiles asked (Psalm 137), “How can we sing the songs of Adonai here on foreign
soil?”
These are the tunes of my Camino now.
[i] The Psalter was a
wonderful gift from my friend Peter Harris.
Go to http://psalms.seedbed.com
for the on-line version. Once, Peter and
I walked 500 miles across northern Spain. We prayed. We sang. We ate. For 40 days we got drunk on beauty and grace.
[ii] Middleton, J. Richard, “God’s
Loyal Opposition: Psalmic and Prophetic Protest as a Paradigm for Faithfulness
in the Hebrew Bible”. Canadian-American
Theological Review, Vol. 5, no. 1, 2016,
pp. 51-65.
