In two days, my Christmas break will be over. When Monday comes, I’ll stand before 100 kids, tired from that morning’s early awakening and restless in their seats. I will come to them rejuvenated; they to me probably wishing for a few more days off.
No matter: my time away has deepened my conviction of why I am here.
It’s a conviction that is nurtured by an inner source, kept strong by an underground current. I am talking about the way the praying of the Psalms gives strength to the soul; serves as an inner stream that irrigates the rest of life, like the river from Ezekiel’s Temple:
“Where these waters flow, they refresh; everything lives where the river goes.” (Ez. 47:9)
What are these living waters? What are the Psalms?
On an obvious level, they are 150 prayers, most of which were composed by King David, expressing praise, gratitude and lament. They are written instances in which the human soul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, remembers God’s faithfulness – in both the recent and distant past. They express that memory in the form of a prayer, which is to say: animated by faith and love. They are treasures of spiritual sight, packaged in poetry, available for anyone to assimilate into their own prayer. The Psalms are the spinal column of the prayer life for those who pray. Or as St. Athanasius put it: the Psalms are flowers culled from the broad and varied gardens of Scripture, gathered into one place and put into a form one can sing.
I learned to appreciate the Psalms in my 20s, while a novice monk at the Monastery of Bethlehem. It was our practice to pray all 150 Psalms in a week, broken up into 7 chunks each day, corresponding to our 7 times of prayer. Certain Psalms struck me deeply then: Ps. 90, because of its deep sense of trust in God; Ps. 137, as a beautiful way to express gratitude to God; Ps. 24, as a way to ask for guidance; Ps. 142, as a plea from the midst of spiritual night. But, generally, I was too young and spiritually illiterate to penetrate to the depths of the Psalms at that time. And so, when I left the monastery in 1998, I gradually let go of the practice of praying the Psalms. Who had the time? What did they all mean anyway? What good could Psalms do for one who lived in the world?
Yet I could never quite forget the power of the Psalms, as I had once known them – the way Psalm 103 seemed to sketch the inner logic of the created word; the way Psalm 106 forecast Jesus’ dominion over wind and sea in Mark 4; the way Psalm 142 unsettled some kind of earthquake in my soul when I first heard it chanted in a vaulting Italian Church in the thick darkness before dawn.
And so, over the years, in various gasps and occasional short sprints up spiritual mountains, I tried to keep the Psalms alive.
As time passed, my post monastic life reached an initial equilibrium, fueled by my return to the practice of Lectio Divina. But I still hadn’t returned to anything like the practice of praying the Psalms. In truth, I wondered whether I wasn’t already a fish out of water, dedicated as I was to the practice of Lectio Divina. Wasn’t that monkish enough? I had, on a few occasions, tried praying the Liturgy of the Hours. But I couldn’t shake the impression that the praying of Psalms was the domain of monks and priests. And I never heard a good argument to the contrary.
That all changed the day I stumbled onto a podcast featuring an interview with the Orthodox Priest, Fr. Patrick Reardon. The subject turned to the Psalms, and I will never forget the discussion. This erudite man was a husband, father, grandfather, busy parish priest and scholar; and he nearly lit up the screen – fire of heart and intellect! – with his animated articulation of the way the Psalms burned in his soul like a fire shooting from earth to heaven. He would pray them upon rising, upon going to bed, at the start of his regular prayer times, as he drove to visit parishioners, and during the formal liturgical services he presided at the Church. He spoke of the Psalms in a way I had never heard another human being speak of them – except for monks. But he was no monk. In fact, he was just as busy in the world as any businessman I knew.
So maybe, I thought, Lectio Divina was not the only monastic practice that was never intended to be just for monks. Maybe the monks were just the ones who took the time, who paid attention. Maybe the Psalms were for anyone who was paying attention.
I decided to sprinkle some Psalms throughout my day, beginning with the Psalms I could “understand.” I also decided to follow a harder counsel of Fr. Reardon: to memorize some Psalms, as best I could. As I did so, I discovered something marvelous. Psalms are beautiful to pray from the written page, but when you memorize and pray a Psalm it’s like you change your inner climate. It’s like you renovate your inner rooms. It is as though a pure stream of living water flows from some source within you, up to heaven. The Holy Spirit himself prays in you, through the words He inspired in the soul of David. They are an inexhaustible spring. They cause to bubble up meaning ever new, always capable of revealing new depths.
I found myself wanting to memorize as many Psalms as I possibly could. Then something curious happened. For various reasons (or maybe because the Psalms were working in me, pushing me deeper, toward the inner life), I made the decision to exit my marketing business. I wanted to return to teaching (I taught as a younger man) but hadn’t found the right position yet. So I was looking for an in-between job. A holdover gig while I searched for the long-term spot.
Laughable though it may seem, I took a job delivering flowers for Benken Florist. This was not entirely random. Benken was the florist where I first worked upon returning from the monastery in 1998. At the time, I figured: while I work out my next move, I might as well bring a little beauty into the world.
I had similar feelings this time, only now I had a new plan. Why not work in a job that would allow me to memorize Psalms as I worked? For hours a day, I would be driving, with my directions, at intervals, blurted out from the GPS. This left my mind free to memorize Psalms I would write out by hand the night before. The result: in the three months it took me to find my teaching role at Purcell, I had memorized 21 Psalms, which I now split up into 7 different times throughout the day. Since they are memorized, I can pray them while driving, while walking, even, if need be, while grocery shopping. And of course I pray them during my more fixed times of prayers.
Here’s what I discovered: a Psalm from the heart makes any place a temple. It is a vertical lance, a spear cast toward heaven, a single firework shot straight to its target in the heart of God. Alongside my practice of Lectio Divina, having the Psalms ready, at heart, enables me to follow an adapted monastic liturgy of prayer, even in the midst of a busy life as teacher, husband and father.
To say a bit more, I have found that memorized Psalms enable the voice of the Holy Spirit to pray from within me to the Father. The Psalms have come to form a kind of inner gearing to my prayer life that can be activated in any of the free moments of my day: while showering, making coffee, driving to and from school, to the grocery or to the gym; taking a walk to the water fountain or just during a pause between classes; or withdrawing to stroll beneath the stars at the end of the day. When the psalms are in the heart, the soul finds it can amble among the glens and the green shades of Israel: in the shadow of the tent of encounter, in the olive trees near Gethesemani, in the wilderness of Kadesh. One’s inner life becomes the inner life whispered into David by the Spirit. It is a journey that knows no end.
Beyond whatever modest income I made at Benken Florist, the hours that job gave me to memorize the Psalms has been a mode of spiritual payment I have since drawn from and re-invested over and over again.
As an aside, I should say, that over the years I also came to discover the liturgy of the Orthodox Church – in all her guises (Greek, Russian, Antiochian and American). Orthodox liturgies are marvelous for the way they chant the Psalms, throughout the day, like monks do. Attending Orthodox services, when I can, has been another way for me to better pray and understand the Psalms.
One of my favorite writers, Paul Evdokimov, quotes St. John Chrysostom, in saying that lay people are called to the same spiritual heights as the monks. I think he is right. After all, if you read the New Testament closely, you will see ample evidence of the marvelous spiritual heights to which we, as lay people, are invited. You will see Peter telling his lay audience that they are called to share in the divine nature (2 P 1:4) or to form a royal priesthood (1 P 2:9). You will find Paul saying that that the Word of God should dwell richly in his lay audience (Col. 3: 16) for they are called to look on God with unveiled face and to be transformed into His image (2 Cor 3: 18). In this same school of thought, Evdokimov says that all of us are called to be monks from within. “Interior monasticism,” he calls it.
Yes, we are all called to the heights which monks have showed us to climb.
As I labor to make that climb, the Psalms are like carabiners for the ascent, leading me to views that give strength to my day to day. I invite you to make the same climb.
