Psalms

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RHYMING PSALMS, by T. H. Chalm

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INTRODUCTION

The Psalms originally were written as Hebrew-language poetry roughly between the 5th and 11th centuries BCE. I am neither a theologian nor linguist, and neither read nor write any language but English. I cringe to think that people will read “my” Psalms and say that I translated them, which will not be accurate. If I were a purist or had greater ambition, I would have studied Hebrew and learned to read the Psalms in their original language, and in fact, would have created my own English-language translations of the Psalms in writing this work. Nevertheless, all I have done with Rhyming Psalms is transliterate pre-existing English translations.

Along these lines, I attempted to be as faithful as possible to the original meaning and language of each Psalm without straying beyond my very narrow area of expertise, namely, poetry. I only undertook brief research into the meaning of some of the musical terms the Psalms reference, several of which do not have corresponding translations into English. As noted above, I relied solely on English-language translations of the Psalms, primarily the New International Version and The Book of Common Prayer of The Episcopal Church.

My central goal in writing my Psalms was to worship God. When I worship, I frequently express powerful emotions, and in writing Rhyming Psalms, I admittedly took liberties with the language to express feelings in my heart to make the Psalms my own. I also took liberties to make these rhyme, and their rhyme and meter were essential to what I wanted to write.

As a 21st-century English-language poet who loves the sound of words and who aspires to express creatively through the medium of poetry, my hope in re-writing Psalms as rhyming poems was to make them more accessible specifically as poetry for people, who, like me, might only read English. My outlandish and grandiose hope as an artist is that if the Psalms were more accessible as works of art (specifically poetry), their central message could be accentuated or emphasized!

What is the central message of Psalms? To try to answer this question, the fact that the Psalms were included in the Bible as a book of praise to God written as poetry is deeply significant to me.

The Psalms are works of art, songs and poems, created through the action of the divine spark of creativity acting inside of David and their other authors. The Psalms intend to convey, over and over, messages about a good and loving God who is always present, living inside our hearts, not seeking to condemn, but wanting to give us life, peace, love, providence, abundance, and deliverance from adversity, not only eternally, but NOW! This message of love, providence, and mercy is why the Psalms continue to provide comfort to those who are hard-pressed with difficult circumstances in their lives. Everyone encounters struggles, adversity, enemies, discouragement, lack, and need. Sometimes when faced with those severest struggles, we have the sense that only divine intervention possibly could bring deliverance from troubles that beset us. In the Psalms, David both expresses his perception and praise for a universal, benevolent, supreme force while simultaneously acknowledging the common plight of man. The universality of human experience expressed in the Psalms make their central message widely accessible to audiences of many backgrounds and faiths.

If you accept that we are beings that are created by a divine force, creativity then could be said to be an essential aspect of our natures. In this vein, everyone must possess creativity inside them because we all possess the divine spark. The creation of poetry (and art generally) is akin to God’s creative acts, where we create something from nothing. If we ourselves are derivative creatures who are products of a divine act, we are God’s handiwork, and we are his art. Through his creative acts, and through his love, he allows us to participate with him in creation by giving us the capacity to undertake our own divinely-creative, expressive works.

With an awareness of the divine spark inside each of us, we can identify with David, described as “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13.14; Acts 13.22). With language as one of humanity’s defining characteristics, creativity as essential to our natures, and poetry as the most visceral and immediate form of creative linguistic expression, I believe that we all are poets. We all have the opportunity to make art, to express artistically through our faculty of language, and in that process, join with God in his creative acts through the exercise and cultivation of that divine spark working inside of us. An individual’s most simplest expression of gratitude to the divine constitutes an originally-inspired Psalm, a poem, and a work of art.

The Jesus I know is an expression of the same divinity that was the focus of the praise to God expressed in Psalms. His being offers the same possibility for communion with the divine, providence, forgiveness, redemption, salvation, and love for which David praised God in Psalms. These are the themes that David and the other authors of Psalms used, through poetry, to point us to a God who loves us. By investing us with divine creative potential, inspiring artistic works like the Psalms, and investing us with the capacity to participate with him in creation, God clearly expresses his desire for communion. The Psalms suggest to us that God’s desire for communion with us is essential to his nature, and were written as open invitations to his love.

T. H. Chalm, December 28, 2010