At Christchurch, Clarendon Park Road, this evening for the first session in a new course on the Psalms. The course is offered as part of Faith Awareness, the Inter Faith programme of Christians Aware.
There are 32 people in attendance, the largest number I've seen here. The room is packed - so much so that it's decided we'll be meeting in a bigger space next week.
Our speaker is Father Fabian, of Leicester's Dominican Priory. Barbara Butler intoruces him as a theologian who works with young people in the church, with a special interest in international students.
Father Fabian started by reading the 23rd Psalm, arguably the best known and most popular of all the Psalms (in the translation from the Book of Common Prayer):
The Lord is my shepherd;
therefore can I lack nothing.
He shall feed me in a green pasture,
and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
He shall convert my soul,
and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for his
Name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Thou shalt prepare a table before me in the presence of them
that trouble me;
thou hast anointed my head with oil,
and my cup shall be full.
Surely thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the
days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Father Fabian asks us to hold in our minds two basic truths about the Psalms: that they are poems and that they are Jewish.
As poems, they speak in images, they don't use everyday terminology or style (but use rhythmic, heightened language, not everyday terminology or style). As a reader or listener, you're not standing on the outside looking in. In the case of a poem, you're drawn into the lived experience. Poems have an unbounded sort of quality, in that they are open to meaning beyond that immediately intended by the author.
As Jewish texts, their origins and meanings have to be understood and appreciated in the context of Jewish culture and history. While he does not intend to mean that we can't do anything with the Psalms without being an expert on Judaism, Father Fabian does ask us to consider in what ways a Christian (or anyone of religious affiliation other than Jewish) can relate to the Psalms. This is clearly a topic of special interest to me (all the more so in that I'm giving a talk on the Psalms from a Bahá'í perspective in a fortnight's time). I'm rather sorry that we're not going to be listening to anyone offering Buddhist, Hindu, Jain or Sikh appreciations of the Psalms as part of this course.
Father Fabian gives us a historical tout of the place of the Psalms in Christian worship and how this has changed down the ages - with particular reference to the changes he has seen in his own lifetime.
In her closing remarks, Suzanne Jones thanks Father Fabian for his talk, which she describes as having set out a "groundplan" for the rest of the course.
Future sessions will include perspectives on the Psalms from Bahá'í, Jewish and Muslim perspectives; evenings devoted to Christian and Jewish singing of the Psalms; hands on experience of Creative Writing and Letterpress Printing based on the Psalms.
In the photo above: Father Fabian with Beate Dehnen.
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