By Derek Olsen
The center of the Daily Office is dwelling in the house of the Psalms. As the years turn, we wend our way through the pages of Holy Writ but our home, our abiding dwelling, is in the house of the Psalms. It has ever been so. Whether we recite them weekly with Benedict, monthly with Cranmer, or every seven weeks with the latest lectionary, it is their rhythm and rule that ultimately centers our spirituality.
Three truths confirm our choice of dwellings. The first truth is that the Psalter is a microcosm of Scripture. St. Athanasius once explained that if the various parts of Scripture—the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels—are like gardens that each bear a single fruit, the Psalter is a garden that not only bears its own but those of the others as well. There are those that tell of the wanderings of the children of Israel, those that lament the sack of Jerusalem, those that glory in the Law of the Lord, those that invoke the words of the wise. The creation of the world may be found here, the loosing of the waters, the firming of the land. Too—moving into mysteries—the Church has found the birth of our Lord, the Passion of our Lord, and—moving deeper yet—the very conquest of hell writ in figures deep. These are the rooms of the house—rooms of lament, rooms of praise, rooms of wisdom, history, and Law. Rooms through which we wander as we make our daily way through corridors and shadowed atriums, to smell its flowered metaphors, to partake of its edifying fruit.
And, the learning of the psalms is not just a journey through a microcosm of the Old Testament but the wellspring of the New. For how can the sacrifice of our Lord be grasped apart from Mark’s meditation upon the Psalter—“My God my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”—or Luke’s: “Into thine hand I commit my Spirit…”? Indeed what is the letter to the Hebrews but an extended commentary upon the Psalter bathed in resurrection light? How can the riddles of Revelation be read without recourse to a fountainhead of its meaning and language: the cup of wrath, utterances from the throne?
The second truth to be told is this: the Psalter is a mirror of your soul. Look deep within it and study the reflection; see what attracts—and what repels. And know: that from which you recoil dwells in your own depths too.
To learn the psalter is to be confronted: can these thoughts and feelings really be in the Bible? How tragic it seems to move from elevated words of praise and thanksgiving to graphic thoughts about the ends of enemies—dogs lapping up spilled blood, hating with perfect hatred, bones scattered at the mouths of graves. Why must these songs be marred by these…infelicitous and offensive thoughts?
Do you really ask—O child of earth? Is that really repugnant wonder in your voice—or recognition?
For the truth is that these thoughts appear not only in the Psalter; they live in our own hearts as well. The psalms puncture the pride of a superficial piety that presents a smiling mask of religious fervor. Gaze into its words long enough and you shall find the pathway into your own soul too—behind the mask, behind the facades, behind how you think a Christian should feel. Gaze into the mirror and recognize yourself.
But a mirror does more than simply reflect—and the same is true of the Psalter. On one hand, it reveals to us the baseness of our own soul—our petty desires for success or revenge, our self-aggrandizement, our self-loathing. On the other hand, a mirror shows us—without apology—our blemishes and imperfections, not to condemn or drive us to despair, but to offer us the opportunity for correction. The mirror reveals the hairs out of place, the collar askew, so that these may be mended and amended. So too, it is with the Psalter.
Even when it comes to what we feel, we must be taught. Here too the psalms teach. They form in us pathways of religious feeling—the affections of the Christian life—teaching us how to feel and respond. For to be Christian is to be human—to feel the depths of woe and desolation as well as the heights of joy. And any piety that proclaims otherwise promises lies—not truth. Wave your hands and proclaim your constant state of heavenly bliss if you will; in the time of darkness a shallow chorus will fade, but the psalms will give your despair voice—if only: How long, O Lord, how long? Rebuke me not in thine anger nor punish me in thy wrath; out of the depths I cry unto thee… The words that make us in our sheltered chapels and shaded studies recoil from their rawness do nothing but speak the reality of a world entrapped in sin and our rage against the darkness that encompasses—yea, and touches—us. What experience of horror lies behind these words: happy—happy are we who recoil and do not understand…
Prayer, praise, lamentation, exultation, the soul quiet as a child upon its mother’s breast, all of these inhabit the psalms and more, providing us the words when we have none, and revealing the patterns of the Christian life; this is our emotional grammar. It is a grammar where we step through conjugations of praise and pain, righteous indignation and naked fear, despair and confidence. As individuals, as peoples, as voices in the great congregation, it exercises us to pray alone or in throngs. And as exercise it is a form of training. For the longer we dwell in the house of the psalms, the longer they will become the thoughts of our hearts, the words on our lips before we summon them.
Further now, a third truth I tell. Within the Psalter lies the paradox of pronouncement. The psalms give breadth of learning; the psalms providing training in the affections, the cultivation of Christian ways of feeling and being. But these truths are not the source of its power. The source of its power lies in paradox. These words that we read—these words are human. They evoke the deepest depths of human despair, heights of joy, human curiosity at the boundaries in which the soul is enmeshed. Historically these words are bounded: in the fugitive words of a bandit chieftain destined to be king—but not by his own hand alone; in the lamentations of a temple defiled; in the hardships of a people in exile—and a people returned home. These words are the concrete words of a concrete people, and yet… They are words, they are prayers to God, preserved though and over the centuries. And yet… They are also the words of the Spirit, breathed into human hearts, human minds, human lips by the Spirit that spake by the prophets. Words of humans they are also Holy Writ, the words of God that contain all things necessary for salvation. This is the paradox: the words of the psalms are human words to God—yet also Scripture, human words inspired by the very God to whom they are prayed. When we dwell within the house of the Psalms, we dwell not simply in a structure built by human hands—rather one breathed by God. Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither… Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine that I have mingled… These psalms, these prayers, are God’s words, returned again in prayer and praise.
One more dimension completes this truth. Throughout its history the Church has ever reminded and been reminded that the body does not—cannot—speak but through its head. The preeminent speaker of the Psalter is none other than Christ. The one who calls upon God to go out with his armies is the conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, the innocent one silent before his accusers is the Lamb standing as if it had been slain. Who of us may speak of our righteousness before God? He alone… And as we take these words upon our lips—words of humans centuries old, words spoken by the Spirit—we speak them with the awareness that it is not only we who speak but that Christ in us speaks in them and through them, directing their way both in us and before the throne of God.
We who live by the Daily Office dwell in the house of the Psalms. Daily we make our ways through its corridors and rooms, building our lives therein. As we dwell, its character imprints itself on our character. As we open our hearts and minds to its gentle pressures, it works its ways within us. As we fit ourselves to its niches and courts, it too fits us for courts above.
Derek Olsen is completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X dad appear at Haligweorc.
(This is a companion to a previous posting.)
On View: The Paraclete, a photograph by Chuck Kirchner, as seen Illustrated Word at Episcopal Church & Visual Arts.
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