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    O Taste and See: A Biblical Reflection on Experiencing God
    O Taste and See: A Biblical Reflection on Experiencing God
    O Taste and See: A Biblical Reflection on Experiencing God
    Ebook108 pages56 minutes

    O Taste and See: A Biblical Reflection on Experiencing God

    By Bonnie Thurston

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    About this ebook

    If you have always been troubled by the image of God as a punitive judge, this book will show you why this view is so mistaken.

    Psalm 34:8’s “O taste and see how good the Lord is” contains in miniature the whole process of coming to and growing in faith. It gives us insight into God and into how we experience God. We come to know this good and gracious God by means of the body: seeing (a metaphor for understanding) and tasting (shorthand for what the body knows). In fact, it is precisely engrafted hunger that turns us God-ward – only to find God waiting on the road for our return and ready to host a feast for us.

    “If you think you might be hungry for God, but haven’t experienced God directly, or if you are a believer who still feels malnourished, I hope this little book might be for you a kind of manna. Taste. See.” -from the Introduction
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherParaclete Press
    Release dateFeb 1, 2014
    ISBN9781612614878
    O Taste and See: A Biblical Reflection on Experiencing God
    Author

    Bonnie Thurston

    Bonnie Thurston is an experienced retreat leader, New Testament scholar, and poet. She is a founding member and past president of the International Thomas Merton Society. A frequent contributor to popular and scholarly periodicals, she is author or editor of twenty-three theological books and seven collections of poetry. Thurston earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Bethany College and master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Virginia. She has done post-doctoral work in the New Testament at Harvard Divinity School; Eberhard Karls University in Tuebingen, Germany; and the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. An ordained Protestant minister since 1984, Thurston taught at the university level for thirty years and has also served as a pastor at five churches and two overseas ministries. Thurston lives in West Virginia.

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      Book preview

      O Taste and See - Bonnie Thurston

      OTASTE

      AND

      SEE

      OTASTE

      AND

      SEE

      A BIBLICAL REFLECTION

      on EXPERIENCING GOD

      BONNIE

      THURSTON

      2014 First Printing

      O Taste and See: A Biblical Reflection on Experiencing God

      Copyright © 2014 by Bonnie Thurston

      ISBN: 978-1-61261-407-6

      Except as noted, all quotations from the Holy Scriptures are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.

      Thurston, Bonnie Bowman.

      O taste and see : a biblical reflection on experiencing God / Bonnie Thurston.

      pages cm

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 978-1-61261-407-6 (pb french flaps)

      1. Spirituality—Christianity. 2. Experience (Religion) I. Title.

      BV4501.3.T518 2013

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      Published by Paraclete Press

      Brewster, Massachusetts

      www.paracletepress.com

      Printed in the United States of America

      FOR THE SISTERS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

      Marie de la Roche Province:

      in thanksgiving for

      making God’s providence visible

      and for our shared experiences thereof.

      CONTENTS

      PSALM 34 in the New Revised Standard Translation

      INTRODUCTION

      PART

      ONE

      1 THE PHRASE Text and Context

      2 THE LORD IS

      3 THE LORD IS GOOD

      PART

      TWO

      4 EXPERIENCING GOD Seeing

      5 EXPERIENCING GOD Tasting

      CONCLUSION

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      NOTES

      PSALM 34

      in the New Revised Standard Translation

      ¹ I will bless the LORD at all times;

      his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

      ² My soul makes its boast in the LORD;

      let the humble hear and be glad.

      ³ O magnify the LORD with me,

      and let us exalt his name together.

      ⁴ I sought the LORD, and he answered me,

      and delivered me from all my fears.

      ⁵ Look to him, and be radiant;

      so your faces shall never be ashamed.

      ⁶ This poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD,

      and was saved from every trouble.

      ⁷ The angel of the LORD encamps

      around those who fear him, and delivers them.

      ⁸ O taste and see that the LORD is good;

      happy are those who take refuge in him.

      ⁹ O fear the LORD, you his holy ones,

      for those who fear him have no want.

      ¹⁰ The young lions suffer want and hunger,

      but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.

      ¹¹ Come, O children, listen to me;

      I will teach you the fear of the LORD.

      ¹² Which of you desires life,

      and covets many days to enjoy good?

      ¹³ Keep your tongue from evil,

      and your lips from speaking deceit.

      ¹⁴ Depart from evil, and do good;

      seek peace, and pursue it.

      ¹⁵ The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous,

      and his ears are open to their cry.

      ¹⁶ The face of the LORD is against evildoers,

      to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.

      ¹⁷ When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears,

      and rescues them from all their troubles.

      ¹⁸ The LORD is near to the brokenhearted,

      and saves the crushed in spirit.

      ¹⁹ Many are the afflictions of the righteous,

      but the LORD rescues them from them all.

      ²⁰ He keeps all their bones;

      not one of them will be broken.

      ²¹ Evil brings death to the wicked,

      and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.

      ²² The LORD redeems the life of his servants;

      none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

      INTRODUCTION

      Some bits of Scripture are for an individual forever associated with a place and a time, and thereby become part of the furniture of the heart. Psalm 34:8a is such a phrase for me: O taste and see that the LORD is good, or in the form deep rooted in my heart, O taste and see how gracious the Lord is.

      In the mid-1970s I was a graduate student at the University of Virginia and fully subject to the influences of those heady days. I was also led by Providence to St. Paul’s Memorial Episcopal Church, which became one of the formative influences in my life. It was a lively and progressive place, full of the sort of people I wanted to be when I grew up. The parish’s crown was wonderful liturgy and an extraordinary music program directed by one of the professors of music at The University. I sang in the choir for five years and learned a great deal about musicianship, the range of English church music, and most importantly, dedication, friendship, and loving God with the body, in that case, the voice.

      It was there, in what was then the rather dank choir room in the church basement, that I first heard (and sang) R. Vaughn Williams’s glorious setting of O taste and see. It was one of the composer’s last sacred pieces, written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (and thus is only a tiny bit younger than I am). One treble voice slices through the silence, and then, in vaguely pentatonic mode, other voice parts take up in a deceptively simple-sounding, canon-like structure the psalmist’s extraordinary invitation to taste God and see God. Wait a minute! Isn’t God incorporeal? Spirit (John 4:24)? Doesn’t God say, You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live (Exod. 33:20)? And yet here are twin imperatives to perceive God’s Providence viscerally, in our bodies.

      When I read Psalm 34, as I do monthly in making my way through the Psalter at the Daily Offices, when I come to 34:8 I always hear Vaughn Williams.¹ It was his music and St. Paul’s choir that first led me to ponder this verse, to taste its ideas, eat them, ruminate on them (to use a visceral metaphor). This tiny phrase, buried as it is in the Psalter, is one of the great keys of Judeo-Christian-Islamic spirituality and one of the church’s lost missionary invitations.

      I believe, and I hope this little book will demonstrate, that it contains monotheistic theology in a nutshell, perhaps the shell of Dame Julian of Norwich’s hazelnut with its focus on God’s love and grace. But when there is a

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