Next week I will be looking at some Sonnets and Psalms with my Freshman Writing Seminar students. We will be writing our own Sonnets and Psalms. So I’m “playing” with some myself. I love the Psalms, not just because I like poetry and music, but because they are so very, very human and reveal the wrestlings of real people — the struggle to understand the outer world and the human interior landscape, with God in mind, heart and soul. In the Psalms, our relationship with Yahweh is not linear, and I find that to be true. Mine has been quite circuitous, that is certain.The Psalms are the Bible’s “Reality Shows”, which actually I hate. But I love real literature about real human experience that seeks to know more than what we can see, smell,taste, touch and hear — writers that strive for metaphor that expands understanding. The Psalmists do that as well as any. So for what it is worth, which is never very much…..
Psalm #1
November 28, 2015
By Jane Tawel
Praise to the God who reigns;
Though I forget You on a daily basis, You keep the stars in their places, and the sun gazes on.
Praise to the God who weeps;
Though we kill and kill and kill until our trigger fingers are numb, You mourn for each life wasted.
Praise to the God Who takes away,
No army can defeat You, no nation survive.
How I long, Oh Jehovah, to be at peace, to know what wholeness is like.
My soul shrinks daily with the expenditures of my life,
And my nights are as an endangered species, wakeful and watchful, for a morning of more loss.
But You alone, are my God, if only my ears were still young,
I would come to You, Yahweh, with open hands, now cragged and dappled.
I yearn to reach beyond my plasticized world,
To the Heavens of Your dreams,
To be a better Human, like Your Son.
How long, Oh, God, will You dally, while we work and slave?
My heart sighs and yawns and breaks into a million pieces,
My pain is my heartbeat and my mind rushes on.
My soul only truly knows myself.
How many angry tears are left for me to shed?
But I will praise You, for You alone are a God.
Though many have more money than You,
Though many have more might than You,
Though many have more worshippers than You,
Though many are much sexier than You,
You alone are God.
You Are.
You Were.
You Ever More Will Be.
Praise to the God Who loves,
Even Death could not out-embrace You.
Praise to Jehovah, Who lives,
You create life and sustain us.
Praise to the God who laughs;
In Your Triune comedy act, You make Each Other roar, like thunder on a sun-soaked day.
Praise to the God Who gives, and gives
You own every molecule, every cell, and all is Yours to distribute as You will.
Praise to the God Who Is
And ever more will be!
When to dust I return, to snuggle up next to my grandparents,
You alone, still reign.
Though I have no right to ask,
May You crook a small finger
To call me from my dusty bed,
To live with You in Your peaceful Kingdom,
Where You and Yours will reign
forever.
Jane Tawel 
That’s a really good psalm, Jane. Here’s one of mine:
A Psalm of Beginning
Praise ye the Lord! But how do I begin?
I know, O God, that thou art the Lord of all, the beginning and the end.
Praise ye the Lord, with music, with song…the very birds know better than I how to praise thee.
You made them, Lord, to lift their heads, throats shining in the sun, and effortlessly give forth a torrent of warbles, tweets and chirps, squawks and songs.
All the world lifts itself up to thee, O God, the sun rises to meet thee, the trees lift their branches and grow toward thee, flowers push their heads through the earth to meet thee.
They spend their lives in silent tribute to thee.
But what of me, my Father?
Where is my song, my up-reached arm, my face turned up in praise to thee?
Where indeed.
Ah, but I love thee, God, a small and tentative love; not as the Psalmist, not at all….
not as those who gave up life for thee, spent their days in praise and worship of thee.
But why not?
Why not indeed.
Thou art worthy of all love.
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