I was fascinated when I started to read sacred literature, especially its poetry, as an unburdening of the deepest emotions and highest aspirations of our common humanity. I could feel the heartbeat of the writer. I could answer with my own tears or ecstasy. I could experience our common humanity, through another’s spiritual eyes. But what was amazing from the lyrics of the Biblical Psalmists was the way in which they accepted the whole of life, their common humanity, from the perspective of being ‘in God’. All existed as a fact. They just lived life as it is, with both its complaints and its celebrations, in raw reality, within the operation of God. In my reading of the Psalms I have asked ‘Who is God’ to the Psalmist; and in my responsive verse I reflect back to God, who I have heard the Psalmist believes God to be.
I was fascinated when I started to read sacred literature, especially its poetry, as an unburdening of the deepest emotions and highest aspirations of our common humanity. I could feel the heartbeat of the writer. I could answer with my own tears or ecstasy. I could experience our common humanity, through another’s spiritual eyes. But what was amazing from the lyrics of the Biblical Psalmists was the way in which they accepted the whole of life, their common humanity, from the perspective of being ‘in God’. All existed as a fact. They just lived life as it is, with both its complaints and its celebrations, in raw reality, within the operation of God. In my reading of the Psalms I have asked ‘Who is God’ to the Psalmist; and in my responsive verse I reflect back to God, who I have heard the Psalmist believes God to be.
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