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    Finding Your Voice in the Psalms: An Invitation to Honest Prayer
    Finding Your Voice in the Psalms: An Invitation to Honest Prayer
    Finding Your Voice in the Psalms: An Invitation to Honest Prayer
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Finding Your Voice in the Psalms: An Invitation to Honest Prayer

    By Elizabeth J. Canham

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    About this ebook

    Have you ever railed in anger about some situation in your life and wondered if something horrible might happen because you dared express your rage to God?

    Or after some trauma, have you experienced the horrible sense of God's absence? If you've had these or other feelings and wondered what to do with them, the Psalms provide a good way for you to pray about any situation.

    Canham, an Episcopal priest who specializes in teaching and spiritual guidance, explores 7 themes found in the Psalms:

    • hearing God's word in stillness and silence
    • finding stability in God's faithfulness
    • dealing with disappointment, anger, and pain
    • resting in God's grace
    • celebrating creation
    • touching the holy in the ordinary
    • discovering joy and learning to praise

    Discover the beauty and power of the Psalms. Learn how to write your own psalm about your present experience, desire, need, hope, or joy.

    Canham says, "In this book I want to share my delight in the Psalms and offer models for praying with them. I write for all the heart-hungry people of God who must live and pray in the midst of very busy lives."

    An excellent resource for anyone wanting to deepen their relationship with God! Consider using this book for individual or small-group study or sharing it with your prayer partner.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUpper Room Books
    Release dateApr 1, 2013
    ISBN9780835811972
    Finding Your Voice in the Psalms: An Invitation to Honest Prayer
    Author

    Elizabeth J. Canham

    The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth J. Canham lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and offers her ministry in teaching and spiritual formation in an ecumenical context as priest, teacher, retreat and workshop leader, and spiritual guide. She is the author of *Heart Whispers: Benedictine Wisdom for Today** and *A Table of Delight: Feasting with God in the Wilderness.**

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    • 4/5
      Finding Your Voice in the Psalms:
      An Invitation to Honest Prayer
      published April 1.13 by Upper Room Books
      Rev Dr Elizabeth Canham author

      I loved this book by Dr Canham. Personable and practical. It makes the Psalms available and applicable ...

      The Psalms are ancient Hebrew prayers addressing our
      experiences in life even today.
      Heartfelt responses of joy, sorrow, lament, praise,
      they encourage free expression by example set.
      Music, dance, movement, all are part of worshipping God.
      In reading another's open heart toward God,
      we discover God's open heart is turned toward us.

      Dr. Canham models praying with the Psalms
      including the silent pause that begins the reading
      and ends each line,
      making room for hearing the Voice of Holy Spirit
      and dwelling in God's nurturing Presence.
      Moving from our own voice - allowing for God's transformative work.

      Lectio Divina is beautifully outlined and explained
      for readers instruction and use.
      A process for creating our own Psalm in response to our life's
      hope, joy, need, gratitude, desire, loss, injustice, grief...
      either individually or in a group, is also described.

      Written with insights gained whilst living
      in a Benedictine monastery,
      accessible writing style for instruction and understanding,
      it is an invitation to intentional living in awareness, present to God.
      Moving counter-culturally from constant restless 'doing' to rest -
      to 'being' - still - living at rest.
      Ps 116.7 'Return, O my soul, to your rest'
      the place of restoration - the still waters and pastures where
      'He restores my soul' Psalm 23.3

      'Finding Your Voice in the Psalms: An Invitation to Honest Prayer'
      is an invitation worth accepting.
      Highly recommended!





      *Thank you to Upper Room Books for the opportunity to read and review
      'Finding Your Voice in the Psalms' without obligation.

    Book preview

    Finding Your Voice in the Psalms - Elizabeth J. Canham

    PREFACE

    GOD’S PEOPLE have been praying the Psalms for many centuries.There is much wisdom that resonates deep within us in these prayers of our forbears, even though some of the images may need reinterpretation in our present age. The Christian church adopted the Hebrew Psalter early in its life. Saint John Chrysostom wrote in the fourth century CE that the singing of psalms is first, midst and last in Christian worship. Liturgical churches continue to include the Psalter in the daily office, Eucharist, and at other times the people of God gather.

    The Psalms give voice to the wide range of human emotions that arise in everyday experience. Jewish and Christian worshipers derive comfort, hope, encouragement, and joy from these ancient prayers but also find a way to cry out through them in anger, fear, and doubt over the power and goodness of God. Individuals unable to worship corporately also find that the psalms speak to their needs. The well-known Twenty-third Psalm has brought comfort to countless people who are sick and dying.

    During the years I lived and worked in a Benedictine monastery we chanted numerous psalms each day. At times I struggled to sing the intricate chants we practiced each week in choir, but rarely did I leave the chapel without a word or phrase that accompanied me throughout the day. Sometimes the theme of a psalm did not resonate with my personal experience. On a day when I was feeling blessed and aware of the Holy One, we would sing a psalm of distress or anger at God; but I could allow the psalm to become an offering of intercession for any who were suffering and afraid. Sometimes the words were transformative, leading me to spend time with my journal and kindling prayerful desire to be more fully alive to grace. Other times—especially during the predawn office—I was sleepy and inattentive or bored. But the community carried me. The Psalms are prayers that address the vicissitudes of life experienced by all God’s people. I came to love these prayers as never before.

    In this book I share my delight in the Psalms. I write for all heart-hungry people of God who must pray in the midst of very busy lives. Chapter 1 describes a model for praying with the psalms and a process for creating new psalms, inspired by scriptural psalms, that speak to current personal and communal experience. Each subsequent chapter closes with guidance for writing a psalm related to that chapter’s theme. Those who wish to join others in reflection will find a model for using this book in a group context.

    ELIZABETH J. CANHAM

    INTRODUCTION

    EACH MORNING at 5:20 the bell begins to ring, calling the community to prayer. One by one monks appear and make their way over the dew-soaked grass to take their place in the church. One or two visitors join the community members to begin the morning with recitation of psalms, scripture reading, and prayers. At all other services we chant the Psalms, but in the morning, as we emerge from sleep, we say them together. Singing in tune is a bit too challenging so early in the day. Depending on the time of year, the morning worship might begin in darkness. The church is lit with candles, and the lingering fragrance of incense from Sunday’s Eucharist wafts in the air. There is a sense of freshness, new beginnings, and preparation to live the coming day consciously with God. It is a gift to be here, to plunge into the ancient prayers of the Hebrew people and to discover their blessing for the day.

    I fell in love with the Psalms when I moved to Holy Savior Priory in the South Carolina Lowcountry in 1985. During the four previous years I had lived in New York City and had come to know many of the Benedictine (Episcopal) brothers in the Order of the Holy Cross at their monastery in West Park, New York. Whenever I could take a break from parish ministry, I would board the train for the eighty-mile journey beside the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie. I also introduced members of my parish to the community by offering retreats at the monastery. Most of the members of Saint Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan had never encountered monks and were unaware that religious orders existed within the Episcopal Church. They were deeply moved by the silence, chanting, and beauty of worship. When the monk who had been my spiritual director was appointed prior to serve a daughter house in South Carolina, I was invited to become a monastic oblate and to serve as program director there. For the next five years I lived with the community—sharing the work, worship,and daily life, including weekly choir practice where we learned the intricate chants that lent such beauty to the singing of the Psalms.

    Monastic chant of the Psalms appeals to many today who find the gentle, rhythmic singing a soothing introduction to meditation. Recordings of chant sell in great quantities, and monasteries are receiving a record number of guests looking for a different pace of life. The Psalms draw people in because they represent prayer uttered from the whole range of human experience. Even those of us who do not participate in community singing of the Psalter can relate to the down-to-earth cries of God’s people in these ancient songs. Through the Psalms God’s people have wept together, celebrated victory, danced, made music, lamented, and found hope in Yahweh. Jewish and Christian people alike have cherished the Psalter as a means of praying with integrity. The Psalms of the Hebrew scriptures quickly acquired a fixed place in the church, which chanted the entire Psalter weekly. Over the centuries our liturgies have reduced the number of psalms in worship, but the practice of reciting the whole Psalter on a regular basis has been preserved within monastic communities.

    I discovered at the monastery that worship beginning in silence and punctuated by many pauses allows time for deeper connection with the One to whom we pray. All too often in church the service moves so quickly that it is difficult to be attentive to or even to hear what God may be trying to say to us. In my own Anglican tradition, the Book of Common Prayer repeatedly notes that after a reading or sermon silence may be kept, but rarely do we honor those pauses. Clergy sometimes fear that silence will make the congregation grow anxious. We seldom take time for stillness in our culture. Monastic life is countercultural in that it punctuates each day with periods of silence. Monastics are no less busy than the rest of us; the telephone rings, guests arrive at the door, the grass needs to be mowed, food must be prepared—but when they (and we) attend to tasks from a place of stillness, it enhances the quality of Presence. The Psalms introduce a rhythm that reminds me of the ocean as wave upon wave reaches the shore, sometimes gently, sometimes with crashing vigor, but always with regularity. As I sat each day with the monks and learned to pause at the end of each line of a psalm—alien to my usual way of reading—I began to let the Psalms pray me. Today, with no community to assist my praying, I find that if I continue to practice the frequent pauses, I am more able to hear what God is saying through these ancient prayers.

    ONE

    Developing Honest Prayer

    THE PSALMS CAN HELP US to pray with body, mind, and spirit. The beauty and wonder of creation is writ large in the Psalms; so is encouragement to celebrate God’s praise through movement, dance, body prayer, and music. The following model will help us to pray the Psalms.

    Praying with the Psalms

    1. Begin with prayer.

    Before

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