We were born with this book in our very bones.  A small book; 150 poems; 150 steps between death and life; 150 mirrors of our rebellions and our loyalties, of our agonies and our resurrections.  More than a book, it is a living being who speaks, who suffers, groans and dies, who rises again and speaks on the threshhold of eternity; who seizes one, bears one away, oneself and all the ages of time, from the beginning to the end.  (A. Chouraqi).

Christians have been praying, chanting, and singing the Psalms for centuries.  I don't think that's by accident.  In them, we find real life.  Love.  Hate.  Hurt.  Loneliness.  Joy.  Grief.  Sin.  It's all there.  We find Jesus in the Psalms.  Psalm 2.7 tells of the Lord's birth; Psalm 98.3 describes his manifestation to the Gentiles; we read of His suffering and death in Psalm 22.  Psalm 118 recounts His resurrection; Psalm 47 tells of His ascension and finally His second coming to judge mankind is described in Psalm 96.*

I like how Chouraqi describes the Psalms.  They are "in our very bones."  Although I've prayed them many times, I keep coming back.  The Spirit continues to use them to speak to me.  They echo in my heart.  Sometimes, they come to mind during the day.  I hope they're becoming a very real part of me.

So, what about you?  What's your experience with the Psalms?

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*As described in The Psalms:  A New Translation by Paulist Press

. . . .for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.  (St. John of the Cross)

Thus at every moment we should cultivate the earth of our heart with the gospel plow—that is, with the continual remembering of the Lord’s cross . . . (John Cassian: The Conferences)

To believe deeply, as Jesus did, that God is present and at work in human life is to understand that I am a beloved child of this Father and, hence, free to trust. That makes a profound difference in the way I relate to myself and others; it makes an enormous difference in the way I live. To trust Abba, both in prayer and life, is to stand in childlike openness before a mystery of gracious love and acceptance.

(Emphasis mine.  Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel:  Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out)

I hear thunder.  I expect the rain is not far behind.  I'll be driving down to the Abbey this morning and so I was reminded about a journal entry that I've written about before from Thomas Merton.  Here it is again for your reading pleasure.

April 15, 1961

Thunderstorm. The first I have sat through in the hermitage. Here you can really watch a storm. White snakes of lightening suddenly stand in the sky and vanish. The valley is clouded with rain as white as milk. All the hills vanish. The thunder cracks and beats. Rain comes flooding down from the roof eaves, and the grass looks twice as green as before.

Not to be known, not to be seen.

The heart of it -- the central thing that is supposed to happen "after you believe" -- is thus the transformation of character.  (Bp. Tom Wright, After You Believe)

If you read my blog very often, you know that I enjoy reading Thomas Merton's writings.  Once in a while, I like to grab one of his journals and read what he was thinking about and writing about around this time of year.  Here's an entry from 1963.

January 25, 1963

Still very cold and bright.

The best thing about the retreat has been working in the pig barn and then walking back alone, a mile and a half, through the snow.

I think I have come to see more clearly and more seriously the meaning, or lack of meaning, in my life.  How much I am still the same self-willed and volatile person who made such a mess of Cambridge.  That I have not changed yet, down in the depths, or perhaps, yes, I have changed radically somewhere, yet I have still kept some of the old, vain, inconstant, self-centered ways of looking at things.  The situation I am in now has been given me to change me, if I will only surrender completely to reality as it is given me by God and no longer seek in any way to evade it, even by interior reservations.

Hitherto my interior reservation has been always "Of course there must be something better, and who knows if that is not for me?"

Well, there is something better:  but it must come out of an inner transformation of my own self, in Christ.  What is better is Christ, that is to say, for me to live completely in and by Him.  I already do live in Him, of course, but there remains much to be surrendered that still remains "my own."

I'm always intrigued by how much "normal" stuff Merton writes about.  The weather.  His own internal struggles and failings.  His frustration with himself and others, etc.  Perhaps that's why I resonate with his writing as much as I do.