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    New Psalms for Old Sorrows
    New Psalms for Old Sorrows
    New Psalms for Old Sorrows
    Ebook160 pages1 hour

    New Psalms for Old Sorrows

    By Michael Gojanovich and Debbie Thompson Wilson

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    About this ebook

    This beautifully illustrated book explores the three basic questions we all ask at some point: who are we; how do we fit into the universe; and who's in charge here. The writers of the Psalms asked the same questions three thousand years ago, and we're still trying to figure it out. This book doesn't claim to answer these existential questions, but sometimes, in order to get closer to an answer, it helps to ask the questions in a different way.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateApr 18, 2014
    ISBN9780993691300
    New Psalms for Old Sorrows

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      Book preview

      New Psalms for Old Sorrows - Michael Gojanovich

      New Psalms for Old Sorrows, Copyright © 2014

      by Michael Gojanovich and Debbie Thompson Wilson

      All rights reserved

      ISBN 978-0-9936913-0-0

      Paintings by Debbie Thompson Wilson

      - inspired by medieval manuscript illuminations.

      New Psalms for Old Sorrows -Introduction

      God’s word to the wicked man is this: What right have you to recite my laws, and to make so free with the words of my covenant, you who hate correction and turn your back when I am speaking?

      Psalm 50:16-17

      A fair question. A little harsh, perhaps, but one to which anyone who presumes to speak or write about the nature of God must find an answer. As it turns out, it’s a really hard question, and answering it correctly requires a degree of honesty and self-awareness that few of us possess - or even wish to possess, for that matter. Not many of us have led lives that will stand up to that kind of scrutiny, and as the catalogue of remembered sins large and small grows, so does the awareness that we have wasted an appalling amount of time being selfish, unkind, and willfully blind to the consequences of our actions. We find that we have become far more of a cautionary tale than a role model, and are embarrassed into silence. As I said to my pastor early in the process of writing the prayers collected in this book: I don’t understand why someone like me gets to write this stuff.

      And therein lies the paradox that is the answer to God’s question. It is when we recognize that we have no right to speak, that we must, no matter how terrifying the prospect. Our realization of how flawed and damaged we are is our first look at the face of the God that lives within us, and the first indication that we have finally learned something worth sharing. The alternative, to remain silent, is no alternative at all, for it means that the only people talking will be those predatory and/or delusional types who believe that they are conduits for God’s grace: your point of contact with the Almighty. These people would insinuate themselves between us and God - as though that were possible - and act as brokers to get us a better deal than we could have gotten for ourselves. Life reduced to a string of transactions. That approach is not likely to help us find the truth about anything, much less the fundamental questions of who we are, our place in the universe, and how we should relate to our Creator.

      Those three questions: our identity, our status, and who’s in charge here, are at the root of all the other questions that plague us, and after all these thousands of years we still haven’t come up with the right answers. We have, however, come up with a great many wrong answers over the millennia, usually by re-framing the questions in a way that serves what we perceive to be our own best interests. A quick overview of human history -think war, famine, pestilence, and death - will indicate how well that’s worked out. So, here we are, and life is still all about unanswered questions.

      It’s interesting to note how many of the Biblical Psalms begin with a question. Why must I suffer? Why do my neighbors hate me? Why have you abandoned me? Pretty much the same questions we’re asking today. The language may be different, but the things that bother us most are the same things that bothered the writers of the Psalms three-thousand years ago. Perhaps that is why we still find the Psalms so relatable. It could just as easily be us, staring out into the darkness and uncertainty, asking God: Where are You? And what is going on?

      Most of the prayers in this book are also questions - I too, though advanced in years, am still wondering what’s going on. These prayers were selected from a group of about a hundred and fifty that were written over a four year period to be read as part of an Anglican Sunday service, although many of them are not strictly Christian in outlook. They were intended to relate to that week’s scripture readings and the season of the year, and that is how they’ve been sequenced in this book. Purists will note that in many Christian churches the year starts with Advent, but in my experience, most parish life seems to follow a fall to summer cycle, so that’s how this book is arranged.

      In conclusion, I must gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Debbie Thompson Wilson, whose paintings inspired this collection; the Rev. Kevin Bothwell and the good people of St. James the Apostle Church, in Guelph, Ontario, who gave me the freedom to write absolutely anything I wanted; and my wife Vicki, who is the center of my life, and simply the best person I have ever known. And, for the record, I also wish to lay claim to being the first person to use the word shut-up in an ecclesiastical prayer.

      Ordinary Time

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