My husband and our 20yo were talking about psalms this evening, and my husband said there was really only one psalm everyone knows: Psalm 23. I said, What? I said, Excuse me? I said, Let's begin at the beginning.
I never knew my great-grandfather, but my grandmother always told me that his favorite part of the Bible was Psalm 1: blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. "Like a tree!" I told them. "Planted by streams of water! That bears its fruit in due season!"
I wound up grabbing my Bible and flipping all the way through the psalms. There are stretches where almost every psalm is a treasure (that stretch from 90-99 gets my vote for highest density of truly excellent psalms) and stretches where things are a little less persuasive (I'm not a big fan of 70-79, myself). Personal faves: 19, 27, 29, 37, 40, 42, 46, 62, 67, ALL THE NINETIES ESPECIALLY 96, 100, 117 (so concise!), 121, 150.
In the late 80s and early 90s, when I was in college and round #1 of grad school, there were a kazillion upbeat psalm settings floating around. Does this ring a bell for anybody else in my demographic? Standing there, O Jerusalem, in your gates unto the house of the Lord? Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings? They were sometimes rather fractured syntactically, but we sang them enthusiastically nonetheless. The pastor of the evangelical church I attended in college challenged me to memorize the letter to the Ephesians, which was kind of a project, and then after that he recommended that I take 5 psalms and make them my own.
Phase 2 of Operation Learn The Psalms commenced in the mid-90s. Have I told you the story of getting started with the Liturgy of the Hours? One of the priests at the Newman Center wanted to encourage students to learn to pray the Divine Office. One night at a Bible study he walked us through Evening Prayer (which felt like it lasted approximately two weeks). Another time I picked up Shorter Christian Prayer from the rack of books for sale in the chapel, and found a post-it note inside in his handwriting. It said, "This is a great prayer book! I give it 4 stars! ★★★★" I bought the book, and kept the note in it for years. It was the beginning of a daily LoTH habit that has carried me from young adulthood into middle age. To pray the Office is to learn the psalms.
When I flipped to Psalm 103 it reminded me of the Godspell soundtrack, which I popped in as an accompaniment to our laundry-folding and our dinner. "And like an eagle he renew-ew-ew-ews the vigor of thy youth!" My 20yo says he's contemplating a Psalm 110 tattoo. And I can't say that I'm enthusiastic about tattoos on my offspring, but it's harder to argue with a Psalm 110 tattoo.
Tell me your favorite psalms, please, and your favorite 80s-90s psalm settings.
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