Recently, I have become familiar with the music of a group of musicians called Shiyr Poets. I first heard one of their songs on our Christian radio station, and, intrigued, I looked further into the group. Headed by Brian Doerkson, this group of three men and a woman have undertaken to writing each of the 150 psalms of the Bible to music.
Now, I grew up in a tradition that had set the 150 psalms to music, so this wasn't a terribly new concept for me, but the song I heard on the radio that day gripped me. I mentioned Shiyr Poet's project to a friend and colleague, someone who might love the Psalms even more than I do, and he quickly purchased both the CDs that the group has produced to date, approximately the first 20 of 150 psalms. And I, being the frugal offspring of frugal Dutch immigrants that I am, then borrowed the CDs from him.
I have been playing the first CD in my car, on my one-way hour-long commute, for the last week. I've only gotten to the first CD. Psalms 1-10. And it has challenged the way I view worship, and what we like to call worship music.
I like my songs to be sensible. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus. Isn't that how a song is supposed to go? Or, at least, in the tradition in which I grew up, verse, verse, verse, verse. But these songs . . . they move all over. Just when I think I've picked up a line of a tune, the tune changes. The instruments change. The music shouts and cries, laughs and sighs. It moves all over. It's not neat.
And neither are the words. I start to listen, and I think, "Oh, good, a happy song," and in a heartbeat, the song turns to lament. Ok, maybe not happy. Maybe sad. And with a sigh, the words change again. I find my heart twisting and turning inside me. It's not neat.
And I realise how much I've come to expect songs to fit into neat categories. Even the ones in the Bible. I like to categorise them. Pigeonhole them. This is a lament psalm. This one is a thanksgiving psalm. And this over here is a solid praise psalm. It's taken a while, but I've gotten comfortable with the notion that not all psalms are praise psalms, and that crying is a legitimate voice of worship. Indeed, it is the loudest voice of worship in the Book of Praises. But, listening to the Shiyr Poets, I realised that my neat little categories don't work. More, I realised I was becoming almost angry about it. I felt like my heart was being twisted and turned inside me. How dare they wrench me from laughter into tears, and then back again? Sure, lament has a place, but in its place. And it's place is not inside my laughter. Who writes songs like this, anyway, songs that twist from laughter to tears to expressions of childlike trust and back into tears in merest heartbeats?
Umm. . .
Right.
Because life isn't neat. It's not tidily categorised into Hallmark moments. It's a messy mix of laughter and sorrow, belly laughs and sobs so deep I feel they will turn me inside out. And maybe there's something to the notion that both laughter and sorrow can move me to tears, both laughter and sorrow can make me clutch my stomach in pain. Maybe, just maybe, the two feelings are not so far apart as I'd like them to be.
And maybe God knows that, and has given me expression to the mess of life, expression that is just as defiant of categories as life itself is.
And then there's the enemy talk. It never struck me how much the psalms talk about enemies. Mine and God's, and for the follower of Yahweh, they are one and the same. My enemies are God's enemies, and God's enemies are mine. The Psalms are unabashed about crying out for justice, for protection, yes, even for retribution. It's one thing to read it; there is something "polite" about reading it. You can make it sound softer. But there is nothing polite about singing it. It is a God-focused cry for justice in a world that is horribly wrong.
When I think about that logically, I like it. Especially in a world like ours, where innocent diners and concert-goers are shot dead, where innocent city-dwellers are bombed, where innocent passengers on airplanes are blasted to bits, where innocent small children are washed up on foreign shores, where hundreds upon thousands of displaced people walk hundreds of thousands of steps to find safety. I want justice. I want the bad guys to lose and the good guys to win.
But singing about it sounds so . . . rude. So militant. Like, really, I'm going to sit in my car, and sing, "Get them, God, they deserve it"? I mean, they do. I know that, academically. But to actually sing it? Wow.
So I've wrestled with that. Why is that so hard for me? Is it because I'm too North American? Too Canadian? Too nice to be willing to take a hard stand against injustice? Too indoctrinated by my culture to be willing to stare evil in the eye and declare it evil and pray that God will intervene? Too proud and hot-headed, perhaps, to take my enemies to God and leave them there? Perhaps I'll just complain and curse them, but never bring them to God? I'll think about them and whisper about them and rant about them to people who can do nothing about them, but I have a hard time speaking out loud to the only One who can do something about them? How does this make sense? If the psalms speak so freely about evil and enemies, and ask God, so freely, to intervene and deliver from evil and enemies, should I not do likewise? Is it not part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in an unjust world? I am good at cursing my enemies, but I am terrible at praying about them or for them. And yes, these psalms are prayers about, and for, my enemies. It strikes me that, as I have learned to speak the language of lament as worship, perhaps I must learn to speak the language of imprecation as worship.
What a mess. What a confusing, glorious mess. What a roller coaster of laughter and tears, love and hate, anger and trust.
And God says, "Bring it to me. Bring it all to me. Leave it all with me."
And he calls it Praise.
What a wonder.
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