What is the one thing that we human beings can habitually say to each other in order to stand our best chance of fulfilling our telos as human beings?
Tag Archives: Psalms
This is my story, this is my song: the story we enter when praying Psalms 95–97
In the book of Psalms, the entries in the 90s are grand, profound, and glorious. Is this because the reader who enters into them gets grand and glorious feelings, or because the aesthetic quality of their poesy is high, or because they refer to realities that are objectively awesome? (And I realize that “objectively awesome”Continue reading “This is my story, this is my song: the story we enter when praying Psalms 95–97”
A thousand days elsewhere: reading Psalm 84 on Ash Wednesday 2021
We have been living the Thousand Days Elsewhere, but even now The Presence is available. Let us journey toward joy together.
How to ruin the perfect prayer (Psalm 63)
Why should we let the Psalms—or our own prayers—be ruined by the inclusion of unworthy emotions and desires?
Follow the bulls: part 2, the return of the bulls (Psalm 51)
This is the only possible solution to the problem of failure in self-knowledge, the problem of the locked room of delusion and self-deception: to be known by The Other, to invite and open oneself to the knowledge that only The Other has, but which The Other has offered to share.
Fearing and not fearing (Psalm 56)
Fear is a fearful thing. It can cause blindness. It can undermine our rationality. It can make us shoot our wife or betray our country. It can be both a symptom and a cause of unfaithfulness to our God.
Follow the bulls: part 1, the banishment of the bulls (Psalm 50)
Psalm 50 is a psalm of judgment. When God’s people fall in with thieves and adulterers, God rejects their sacrifices.
My mouth filled with blessing: Psalm 34 as rule of life
What would it mean to take the first three verses of Psalm 34 as an individual and communal rule of life?
The simplest psalm (Psalm 117)
St. Athanasius said that the Psalter contains in itself a perfect summary of every other part of the Bible. I think we could also say: Psalm 117—the shortest and simplest of the Psalms—sums up the entirety of the Psalter, and so in some sense the entirety of the Bible.
Reading Psalm 102 on Inauguration Day
We are given another opportunity to love our neighbor as ourselves, which must in the final analysis from a godly, biblical perspective be the sole aim and justification for participating in politics.
Verba Sparsa 