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Donna
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The Therapist’s Journey by Donna Hardy
THROUGH THE PSALMS If you like the Psalms, check out Songs to a Watchful Lover, written by myself and just published by the Angela Center Press. If you love the Psalms, as many people tell me they do, you'll want copies for your friends. And if you don't know the Psalms, this is your invitation to explore these ancient Hebrew poems of praise and supplication, first through my candid verse and then on to the source, which, if you haven't explored it, surely lies waiting on your bookshelf, fit in after Job and before Proverbs. The Psalms are petitions of people who have been promised more than they are getting. They are also exaltations written by the same people who, on better days, are given more than they deserve. What I came to admire as I settled into reading these verses was how concrete their imagery, how earthy their responses. My poet journey was then to write exaltations to Love wherever I found it. In scripture, yes; but also Love in a phone call, an invitation, a gesture, a meal prepared, a book shared, a bouquet left at my door; Love in beautiful objects, in talented performances; Love in all things done very well. And, to be true to the Psalms, I had to write supplications where Love was not; I had to whine, complain, and seek vengeance now and again. All in the name of art. As you read the Psalms you will be struck by how contemporary these ancient prayers are. You will meet people afflicted by strife and hunger, people killed by invading warriors and subjected to foreign powers. You will be with people who are broken and people who are mending from brokenness. You might then find yourself praying for your own experience of invasions, subjugations, brokenness; and for sweet victories over brokenness. You might find yourself petitioning a god who will get right in there and struggle with you, suffer with you. Welcome to the Psalms. For me, reading the Psalms over the three years it took me to do this book, gave shape to some of my own experiences. I did not live everything in the 150 songs I have written, but I can imagine how one might be tempted, for instance, by the promise of wealth; and how empty the ensuing life might be. I have not phoned just to hear someone's voice on an answering machine, but I have known the place from which that need arises. I am not a Biblical scholar, but I can tell you, without theology or apology, that life is a series of ups and downs. Think of yourself as being located in a secure place-physically, socially, economically, psychologically, romantically-and then as being torn from that place, dislocated. Write a poem from there. Struggle, struggle, struggle with that reality and write another poem. Then be mended and settled happily into a new place. Write a poem from there. That's how the Psalms feel to me. The Psalmists speak of life as abrasive, revolutionary, dangerous; a condition of churning disruption. Walter Breuggeman, one of my theological sources, says "Most of the Psalms can only be appropriately prayed by people who are living at the edges of their lives, sensitive to the raw hurts, the primitive passions and the naïve elations that are at the bottom of life." Life at the edge. There is always an edge, always an enemy out there ready to ruin our plans, upset our equilibrium. We think we want to be in a place of comfort, harmony, alignment, orientation and balance; but that is apparently not what life wants for us, perhaps because there is no passion there, no eloquence. We are a people of the story and the story-whether in music, drama, poetry, fiction, biography, memoir or reality tv-comes from places of dislocation. "Why does someone have to die?" Leonard Woolf asks Virginia, as she struggles with writing Mrs. Dalloway. "So that the others can appreciate their lives," she answers. So that she can have a story. So that we can have a novel, a movie. So that we can have poetry.
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