Praying the Psalms

I recently returned from a gathering in Seattle where we explored together the ancient songbook of the Hebrew peoples, the Psalms. For many people they are at once beloved and perplexing. The sense of them is that they are "uneven," at one moment exalted and expressing the best in the human heart as prayer, and at another expressing the worst of religious sentiment. Both are true, but perhaps for reasons that we may not completely understand--because that is the truth of things, not just for religion in general, but for each individual in particular. We are perplexing beings.

If we saw the Psalms as a kind of spiritual archaeology--a layering in the "tel" of human experience where we could go back and discover upon what the "city of God" is built, it might be a wondrous exploration. Perhaps, even more personally, we could look at the Psalms as layerings that lie buried deep inside of each of us. In that way we "rediscover" the foundations of our own prayer and praise. We are encouraged to pray the Psalms, not as history, but as we might pray our own memories and dreams.