April 12x12 #3 "The Psalms"

 

This is part 2 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker: RICH VILLODAS for the month of APRIL. The Conference was entitled "How to Engage God About Your Story." Session 3 was entitled: "The Psalms" This talk was by Adam Young.

Why are the Psalms in the Bible? Most are the prayers of people who are at the desperate edge of their lives. They are in a place of desperation. 

“The Psalms present human persons in situations of regression, when they are most
vulnerable in hurt… most sensitized to life, driven to the extremities of life and faith.”
Walter Brueggemann 

The Psalms are the prayers of people who are fully present to the rawness of their emotions and fully present to the diversity and complexity of their emotions. Our emotions are layered and complex. 

The Psalms are a phenomenal gift of God to human beings. It is hard to know what is happening inside of you. And it is even harder, if you do know, to bring to speech, all of these emotions you are having in all of your rawness and complexity. 

Even if you in a season where you are connected to your heart and emotions, it can be very hard to put words to those feelings. Psalms introduces us to our feelings -- to the vast commotions inside of your heart. 

“In the book of Psalms… you learn about yourself. You find depicted in the Psalms all the movements of your soul, all its changes, all its ups and downs. Look, most of the Bible is about what other people said and did, but in the Psalms… it is as though it were one's own words that one reads… and anyone who hears the words of the Psalms is moved at heart, as though the Psalms voiced for him his own deepest thoughts.” Athanasius

The evocative language of the Psalms has a way of voicing for us our own deepest thoughts, feelings, longings, desires. 

Experiences of extremity lead to big emotions ... combined with difficulty naming and expressing those emotions. Trauma makes it very difficult for you name and express the feelings you had in the midst of the horrible circumstance. And when we can't name and express the feelings inside, then we can't integrate those feelings in our brains. 

“Human experience includes those dangerous and difficult times of disorientation when the
sky does fall and the world does come to an end. The times of disorientation are times
when persons are driven to the extremities of emotion, of integrating capacity and of
language.” Walter Brueggemann

He is saying that the people in the Psalms are in places of disorientation. Trauma overwhelms the brain's ability to integrate. Trauma fragments emotions from thoughts and bodily sensations. Those things get separated in the brain. And therefore they are not connected neurologically or integrated. 

When we are in trauma (when the sky does fall), we find ourselves in what the Psalmists describe as "The Pit." 

Psalm 69 says: "Do not let the floodwaters engulf me or the depths swallow me up or the pit close its mouth over me." 

The Pit is a state of being cut-off by friends, family, and the broader community and being powerless to get out of that exiled place. It's about powerlessness and social isolation. The Pit is an awful experience. When we find ourselves in The Pit, the invitation of the Psalms is to let the feelings that are inside, come to expression in lament. In other words, we are not supposed to pull ourselves or climb out. We are called to identify the full range of our feelings and bring them to speech. 

More often than not, the need to lament comes along unexpectedly. Everything is normal and suddenly BAM you are in The Pit! There is a blindsiding to it. They are speeches of blind dismay. The speaker never expected this to happen. 

The nature of trauma is that you didn't see it coming. You are trapped. The water is rising. The sun may not come up tomorrow. We have been dislocated from the previous normal. We are in a state of disorientation. The old equilibrium is gone. We are in a state of disequilibrium. That is a common human experience and a very hard, trying, painful experience. But this is precisely where the Psalms come in with such unflinching honestly and real life relevance. 

Psalms speak out human experience in a raw and honest way. Lots of human speech is actually a cover-up. We are often expected to pretend everything is fine. Nothing that bad is happening in our communities. This is why marginalized people are often more familiar with lament. They live in that normal. 

The Psalms know that life is unfair and unjust. They know that. Oppression and injustice and unfairness are real and they affect the inside of the human body. No coverup is necessary. The Psalms will tell it like it is on the inside. What would it be like for you to PRAY the Psalms. 

There is a big difference between reading Psalm 13 and praying Psalm 13. It's the difference between maintaining a safe distance in your relationship with God and getting right up close to God with your desperation and plea and need. When you just read them, you can maintain a nice, safe distance from your need for God. But when you being to pray the words on your page and make them your own, suddenly things get far more intimate between you  and God. 

The Psalms have been designed to be appropriated by us -- this means that God's purpose for the Psalms is for you and me to take them and make them our own. Tweak the language! Rewrite it for your present circumstances. 

Even though there is particularity and detail, you often can't tell the discreet problem that the person is facing. The exact problem is vague. And that's the point. The Psalmists lead so much open. They are basically begging you to make their poetry, your's! To make their expressions, your's. 

“The Psalm provides a marvelous receptacle which we are free to fill with our particular
experience.” Brueggemann

Have you ever taken one of the Psalms and replaced certain words with words that describe your particularity, your life, your feelings. What is stopping you from making one of the Psalms your own. You can modify this and make your own and use it as a receptacle for your own life. We don't need to censure or deny the depth of our own feelings. Instead, we are invited to bring those big feelings to passionate and raw speech and address our words to a God who is immensely personal and immediately present and THERE. 

So, how do you make the Psalms your own? How do you modify one or write your own. 

There are several elements of Psalmic speech. These are used in different configurations depending on the situation of the pray-er. 

1. INTIMATE ADDRESS: The Psalmist names God in an intimate way. Such as my God or my Righteous God. Whatever is coming up, the complaint is not uttered to a stranger. It is a spoken to a God with whom you have a relationship based on some measure of trust. It is not being uttered to an empty sky or ceiling. It is being spoken to a deeply personal person whom you believe is there. 

2. COMPLAINT: This is where you tell God just how troubled your life really is. You name with specificity what the trouble is this day, what is needling you or keeping you up at night. Feel free to OVERSTATE the trouble. The Psalmists do this all the time. The goal is to get God's attention and call God to act. The goal of speaking your complaint is relational. Think about a five-year-old and a father or mother. They turn up the intensity to get Mom or Dad's attention. You are doing the same thing in Psalmic prayer. Because, we, like the Psalmists, also experience God as absent as silent or uncaring or removed. God knows this. The goal is to recruit God into the trouble. You want God to be RESPONSIVE. You are reaching out to God and saying, "Help! I'm drowning!"

3. PETITION: This is the main event. You are bringing to God an unedited demand. Turn! Pay attention! Rescue! Turn your face to me Oh God. Pay attention and rescue me! God can and will rescue you if only we can mobilize Him! This third element is aimed at mobilizing God to move and turn His face toward us and rescue us. The Psalmist often brings an insistent request to God without much deference at all. This is a child-like demand of the Psalmist.  

• Psalm 25:17 "The distress of my heart has grown great. From my straits, bring me out." There is nothing polite or deferential here. This is an insistent plea like a child might bring to a parent. What do you need God to do on your behalf. Bring it unedited to God! 

The Psalms were written long before God had brought Jesus to us. Don't fall into the trap of striving in prayer. Don't try to persuade God to move His hand. It is already predisposed to rescue us. We saw God do that on the cross with Jesus. God is predisposed to rescue. When we dare to present our needs to God, something unexpected happens. The unexpected surprise is that God acts. 

Once the Psalmist calls out their anger: “the pain moves to a positive resolution… It is not at all clear what happens that permits such a turn. But it is clear that such a turn belongs regularly to the pattern and genre of lament… The Psalm is genuinely dialogical. It receives an answer that resolves the need of the speaker. Thus the psalm accomplishes something, and the speaker is, at the end of the psalm, in a very different place.” Brueggemann

Brueggemann is saying "We know that the praying of the Psalm resulted in God's act of rescuing the pray-er." The Psalmist may not cause the intervention, but they do believe that intervention won't happen without the prayer being prayed. 

The praying of your own Psalm accomplishes something! This is why when you read so many of these Psalms, there is a shift in the mood of the Psalm. The praying of the Psalm to God somehow brings about rescue for the Psalmist. Do you believe that? 

We have no idea how much time elapsed between when the Psalmist cried out for rescue and when the rescue actually came. You may have cried out to God with desperation and your cry has not yet been answered. Psalm 13:3 to Psalm 13:5 -- what is the length of time between those two verses. That can be a long time. 

But here is the point. 

We need to begin writing our own Psalms and praying our own Psalms. Things will suddenly get very real. Things get very limbic. Very quick. And that's a good thing. 

Check out Psalms of Lament by Ann Weems who lost her twenty-one-year-old son. 

How large a cup of tears must I drink, O God? How much is enough?
Will I weep all the days of my life? Will you forget me forever?
O God, find me! I am lost in the valley of grief, and I cannot see my way out.
O God, find me! Come into this valley and find me! Bring me out of the land of weeping.
O you to whom I belong, find me! Answer me so that I can cling to some hope of your presence.
Every night is filled with terror and with fear. My heart feels as though it will fall from my chest.
Over and over I scream your name, but you do not answer… and you do not come…and I cannot stand it.

The Bible gives us permission to bring our feelings to God. We can shout them to God! We can say what we feel without weighing those feelings. God gives you that freedom. 

We only bring our anger to people we feel safe with! Do you really think God is any different? God is deeply honored when you express your anger and rage. 

Very often, your anger at God is evidence of how important he is to you. It is evidence of your faithfulness to God. It's evidence of your maturity. 

What are three reasons to pray the Psalms you have written? 

1. Praying your Psalm with integrate the neurons in your brain that are fragmented! Emotional experience (your big feelings) is largely a right-brain function. Language is largely a left-brain function. Brain stability (Shalom/wholeness) is a function of the various connections with your brain. So when you put words with your emotions, you are literally linking neurons on your left hemisphere with the right. That is very healing for the brain. It integrates neural networks that were previously fragmented. 

2. Praying your Psalm with liberate your heart. If we don't pray the Psalms, our own experience may be left untapped and inarticulate and therefore not liberated. If we don't pray our feelings, then our experience may be left untapped. Loneliness. Powerlessness. Those experiences are then buried. They need to be released and able to flow. You don't want to leave it trapped. You want to let yourself feel it. You want to articulate it and put it out there. Name it to Tame it! You must name your fear to become free from it. But Adam is saying don't just name it. Pour out that feeling to God in prayer unedited with rawness and grit and passion. Tell God just how bad things really are for you. 

3. It's an act of self-care. It can be an act of defiant hope. Praying a Psalm provides access to feelings that might otherwise lie fallow. It is highly likely that you are having feelings right now that you don't know you are having. "Save me oh God for the waters have come up to my neck." If you don't connect to these feelings, they might erupt. Who among us does not know the experience of suddenly erupting with emotion that is disproportionate to the situation we are in.

4. It can be an act of defiant hope. Reorientation involves the Psalmists looking to God when all evidence looks to be contrary. This has nothing to do with optimism! The Psalmist has already named with great clarity and honesty how troubled life is. He's already said how much is wrong. This is an act of defiant hope. When you say something like "But I trust in your never-ending love," you are defying the work of evil in this world. This last element of a Psalm which includes reorienting yourself to your life (which doesn't have to happen every time), BUT words of reorientation, assert things that have not yet come to pass, and in that way, they are defiant. 

"When the Psalmist asserts hope and trust in the God who is in control, it strikes one as
ludicrous in our world, because most of the evidence of the newspapers suggests God is not in power. If the words must be descriptive, then such a claim is deceptive, for God manifestly is not in control. But if the words are evocative of a new reality yet to come to being, then the words have a powerful function. And indeed, sometimes in a world where the circumstances are hopeless, it is important to pray and speak and sing and share a hopeful word against all the data.” Brueggemann

That is true in our cultural life and our personal life. When the Psalms say something like "God my heart trusts in You," the Psalmist is not describing the actual state of things either in the world or in their heart. The Psalmist is using their words and their will to evoke a new reality that has yet to come to pass. The Psalmist is praying and singing and thinking a word that is against all the data. Words of reorientation have the effect of vetoing the power of The Pit!

To pray words of reorientation is to become vulnerable to the hope that is inside of you. And that hope might be very small. But it is there! God can restore the years that the locus has eaten. You don't need to include words of orientation in all the Psalms you have written, but you might find your heart wants to do it in some. 

Post-lecture notes:

• Your child SHOULD talk to you in a way that they would not talk to another adult because you are safe for them. We are supposed to feel safe to express to our parents what we put a lid on in school. 
• We are not called to an optimism. We aren't called to find the silver lining. We are not called to filter our experiences in ways that deny the reality of our pain! We can be hopeful in great distress. The language of optimism is trying to find the silver lining. It is not reality. 
• We are called to hold DEATH and RESURRECTION at the same time. Mourn with those mourn. Rejoice with those who rejoice. This means you are just as apt to be weeping one moment as you are to be rejoicing the next. Hope has a home in mourning and rejoicing. Optimism does not. 
• In the expressing of the emotions and the naming of the words of reorientation that "I trust in your unfailing love", that creates a mobilization of God and you may find yourself in a very different place after having prayed the prayer.