chris@mcdonnell83.freeserve.co.uk              Previous articles by Chris

                         February 6, 2013                       Chris McDonnell, UK  

                               Praying the Psalter          

     “Like the deer that yearns for running streams
         so my soul is thirsting for you my God”  -    Psalm 41  

The Psalms are rich and fertile ground wherever we find ourselves of our journey. They speak of joy and suffering, success and failure, life and death.

We have a radio programme in the UK called Desert Island Discs where a well-known person is asked to choose eight pieces of music to take to a Desert Island . At the end of the programme, they are offered one luxury, apart from the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.

Putting aside the luxury and the Bard, I have often thought that the whole Bible might be a bit bulky – I would gladly settle for the Psalter, for the words of the Psalms have been read and prayed through the centuries and are still at the core of the Liturgy of the Hours.

The quotation from Psalm 41 that heads this piece, is, to me, evocative of faith. Each of us yearns for running streams to satisfy our thirst. Later in the Psalm is expressed the pain of longing,
“My tears have become my bread, by night, by day as I hear it said all the day long: “Where is your God?”

The taunts of others who challenge faith were about then and are still with us now in the society we live in.  

Returning to islands, I wrote this piece a few years back, when, during my own morning prayer I heard the Angelus bell of the nearby Abbey. I’ll leave it there this week.  

Island

I

 Move out to the margin

and silently watch the surging sea

break on the sand edge, smooth stones

and shale, rolled and salt washed.

High on the hill, gathered stones    

give shelter from the Western wind   

building across a broad, open sky, the

full spread glow of late Autumn sunset.

Open grassland, treeless and torn by rage

Empty distance beyond the fence,

where sea-wail and sky-howl

touch the moon-cold night. 

This awesome place of utter loneliness

where words lead back in loops

unless abandonment is complete,        

this distant, desolate, island home.

II

Dissolving darkness at the sky’s edge

a thread of orange, a breeze from the ocean

when after storm, the distant tide begins to turn.

Walk the shore as the chill stillness of Dawn

cradles the washed-out, sinking Moon.

A personal place of solitude for here, only gulls

wheel and screech, hunting for food,

a place of isolation, where your voice,

calling across the sand, receives no reply.

A place of peace. Walk slowly

the stirring sea edge, expecting nothing

and no-one calls your name.

somewhere (beyond this Island ) a clock

names the hour of early morning prayer.

Here only the sea swell moves ever closer,

antiphons easing-in the shortened hours of day.

III

Between sunrise and evening we walk,

each listening to the Word, returning

to the point of our departure, between

the running water and the rising land.

We live the experience, each speaking

the Word, returning to our hermitage.

The many silent stones we gathered listen,

high on the hillside of our Island ,

                                  awaiting our return.