pat loughery

If we are going to see life as a succession of thresholds to be crossed, we are reminded of the journeys of the people of Israel in the desert, and we then find symbols and images that we can apply to our own experience…

The psalms are the journey songs of the people who made that passage. Time and again they raised a fist to God and shouted angrily at him, asking him where his will was in their lives. Had he forgotten or betrayed his faithful people? If we try to sanitize, edit, or sentimentalize the psalms, they lose their power. They are the songs of a people who were moving away from a known situation into the unknown, and they were often angry with a God who removed all those certainties, who instead seemed to be leading them along an apparently precarious path. They did not sit down for long beside gently flowing streams or linger in lush meadows. When we pray the psalms as they did, we, too, are compelled to stay “at the raw edge,” in the words of Walter Brueggemann.

– from “To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border” (Esther de Waal), p. 54-55

Esther de Waal writes on Benedictine and Celtic spirituality. In this book, she writes about the borders and transitions we face in our lives and how we can live through them and learn from them.

I love her thoughts on the Psalms above. I’ve been deeply rooted in psalms in recent months. I am finding myself at home knowing that, because they are the prayer book of the church’s long history, my relationship of prayer with God can take the heat of difficult times.. The breadth and depth of emotion I feel are not to be hidden, but to be experienced, and brought before God in raw, unvarnished form.

I find great comfort in the reality of a questioning, wounded, confused people who turn to God and are heard. I have no use whatsoever for comfortable Americanized Christianity, in which I have to put on a happy face before approaching God or other Christians. Sometimes – often, even – life sucks, the way ahead is unknown, and if I can’t be real in experiencing and expressing those feelings, what kind of worthless faith is that?