Psalms in the Silence

Be Still and Know that I am God

Psalm 46:10 

We had such a beautiful "Great Silence" retreat this spring.  Every retreatant was able to come.  The weather was perfect, sunny and not too hot.  The food prepared by our very own contemplative chef was tasty and delicious ... it really makes a difference!  Our theme was the Psalms and we found lovely creative ways to enter into them as we followed Walter Brueggemann's Spirituality of the Psalms  to structure our retreat.   

The bible is the grand story of God and God’s people as they journey together.   In the journey there are basically 2 movements within 3 spaces.  We see movements toward God and movements away from God, dancing through life with one another, we move.  

Brueggemann has a wonderful way of inviting us to see those 3 dancing spaces of life reflected in the Psalms:  Orientation, Disorientation, and (often surprising) Reorientation.  As we moved through our retreat, we practiced this rhythm … practicing the rhythm invites us and increases our trust that after every bout of disorientation there will be a reorientation to invite us deeper in our relationship with God, often with a delightful surprise.

We worked with images as we created Psalm Collages and some of us wrote our own Psalms from scratch.  We sat by the lake and we hiked through the woods as, gazing upon beauty, the Psalms came alive for us.  

Perhaps you might like to try your hand at writing a Creation Psalm:

Take your Journal and go on a walk in the presence of God in Creation.   If you can't take a walk, gaze upon a photo of nature that draws you in and allows you to walk in your imagination.  As you walk, breathe in the beauty and wonder you find.   Now … be still in the Presence.   As you become attuned to the nature that envelops you, take time to write down what you notice.  Use these prompts to start writing.  Let the words flow without thinking about them now. 

• I see … I hear … I smell … I feel the texture of … 
• How is God present in Creation?  
• How does God make God-Self known to you here? 
• What does the beauty of your surroundings remind you of … any memories emerge? 
• I want to ask God our Creator this about what I have experienced in nature …  
• I want to tell God our Creator that creation is, for me … or Creation feels like …  
• When I consider the presence of God in creation, I sense a desire to say the following phrase over and over again …
  

Consider the impact and effect nature has had on you today and look over what you have written, circling words and/or phrases that you are drawn to.  You are ready to write a psalm employing the Hebrew literary device used by many of the psalmists, known as parallelism, in which the second line repeats the structure of the first line, such as in the psalm verses above.  Note the way the author has used parallelism … Try these exercises:

• Lists:  Make a short list of things you found on your walk that you are thankful to God for.  Take your list and express your thankfulness to God. (Ps 83:13-15) 
• Restatement:  The first line is not repeated, it is restated.  Write a statement to God about what you found on your walk in nature and then restate it.  (Ps 148:1) 
• Questions: Write several lines, each beginning with “Why …”  (Ps 74:1) 
• Repetition:  Take a word or phrase and alternate with new lines.  (Ps 118) 
• Addressing the Divine:  Consider new names and images of God evoked by your walk

My personal favorite resource for Psalm writing is Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-Inspired Path to Appreciating and Writing Sacred Poetry by Ray McGinnis 

Enjoy ... Psalms in the Silence!
 

The Creative Monster

As my Visionary Women small group has been studying Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron we are finding it difficult to move through because it is taking us deeper than we journeyed last year through the The Artist Way.  Of course it could be that the book is "deeper" or it could be we are "deeper" or it could be a combination of both ... Well, this week we "killed" the Creative Monster.  Cameron talks about the voices that reside in our minds that shame our inner child into avoiding the pain of our creativity.  In a split second, I could hear the creative monster from my past roar back into my consciousness ...that voice that just wouldn't let me feel what I felt ... the voice that made me suspect every emotion until I stopped feeling ... and creating!

Because I love to write I wrote into this exercise with abandon and malice!  Anyway the ladies laughed and begged me to make it a broadway play or write a novel ... ok so they just laughed till they cried and it went to my head.  I did promise to publish on the blog.  So I've cleaned it up for you (really I did) my esteemed readers ... please let me know if you laugh!

Ok you'll have to picture some kind of fantasy land ...

la la la la la la la la la la la ah there I am skipping down the yellow brick road -- wait I don't like yellow -- my road is bubble gum pink for joy and for laughter.  la la la la la la la la la la la ah there I am skipping down the pinky pink road -- ok so yellow brick road sounds better!


la la la la la la la la la la la ah  EEK! Ugliness jumps out in front of me ... "How do you feel?"  asks the Emotion Policewoman with a glint in her eye.  "I'm happy" is my joyous reply.  "HAPPY!  You can't possibly be happy." she sneers.  "Ten lashes with a dirty dishrag for you!" as she slaps me and runs.


la la la la la la la la la la la ah EEK!  There she is again that diabolical Emotion Policewoman.  "How do you feel?"  shrieks the Emotion Policewoman at the top of her ability.  "Well, I'm a little cold."  "COLD! You can't possibly be cold." she snaps.  "We are having a heatwave in your fantasy land today.  What's wrong with you don't you know your own mind?  Off with your jacket"  She dances away picking lint off my threads with her nose in the air.


la la la la la la la la la la la ah  EEK!  "I'm going to kill that Emotion Policewoman!"  I think as I jump to the stars.  "How do you feel?"  she clenchs her teeth and stamps her feet.  "Well dear woman, I am mad!"    Ha Ha Ha ... "you can't possible be mad ... I'm in your head ... you made me up.   You're crazy ... all right you are mad! stark-raving mad!  You are!  Ha ha ha ... Splat!


Off with your head, Emotion Policewoman.


How do I feel?  I feel good, na.na.na.na.na.na ... I knew that I would now!

Well, I feel better.  Do you have a creative monster lurking in the dark recesses of your mind ... refusing to allow you to express youself ... at least to yourself if no one else?  If so, why not try this silly little exercise and let your inner child poke some fun at you on the road to creative recovery!

Writing Morning Pages ...

Are you familiar with The Artist Way by Julia Cameron? Last year I began meeting with a group of women ... we call ourselves "Visionary Women." The tagline for our group is: Creativity as a Spiritual Path to God" and we are all artists of some sort or another. Creativity is our passion and deep connection to God. This year we begin another Cameron book called Vein of Gold. Morning pages are an integral part of the process but there has been one large problem for me since the beginning of our group. Morning pages are supposed to be done, well, in the morning! But I am NOT a morning person.

Morning, morning, morning ... what is so great about the morning? Does it count if I do morning pages at one minute after midnight? Technically that IS the morning. I find myself at a place of trying to separate the things that are true from the things that aren't. I wage this battle often within myself as I listen to mature spiritual people say that you must spend time in prayer and devotion in the morning in order to center your day around God. However, I have always found in my own life that is more easily done for me in the quiet of the late night and in so doing, I feel as though I am centering my entire being around God. And so I struggle ... and I wonder if Jesus only called the disciples to "come away to a deserted place" in the morning ...

I am reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Her message about writing is much the same as Cameron's. Set a goal and then just write! Stream of consciousness ... Cameron says: Write for 3 pages. Goldberg says: Set a time and write for that amount of time. Goldberg says the aim is to "burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what your mind actually see and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel."

Beautiful ... but here I am ... still committed to writing morning pages ... in the morning!