Danger and Desire
Placing the Psalms in contemporary context
As much as anything, the Psalms are a catalog of the many ways that humans experience the Divine. At a time when religious people often gloss over the more prickly aspects of faith, the Psalms remind us that anger, desperation and self-pity are as much a part of spiritual life as joy, hope and redemption. In his book, A Turbulent Peace: The Psalms for Our Time (Upper Room, 176 pp., $14), former Tennessean religion editor Ray Waddle celebrates this very human side of the Psalms and reflects on their wisdom for contemporary life.
A Turbulent Peace divides the book of Psalms into five chapters which correspond to its traditional divisions, themselves called "books." Each Psalm is accompanied by one of Waddle's unflinching and often personal commentaries. For example, Book III addresses Psalm 74, which states in part, "O God, why do you cast us off forever?" Waddle's response: "The strategy of most [congregations in America] remains dignified restraint. The unspoken message of this emotional monochrome is: God doesn't want a wide range of emotions from us. Don't get mad at God. [But] domestic terrorism put us back in touch with the world's savagery. Psalm 74, as if shouted from the back pew, brings us news from the broader world of spiritual danger and desire."
Waddle's comments may focus on the human drama of the Psalms, but they don't ignore their wonder and awe. Despite the depth of the Psalmist's suffering or the loftiness of his joy, a sense of mystery—Waddle calls it "the reign of invisibility"—permeates the book. The unifying message of the Psalms, and of A Turbulent Peace, is that God is too great to be understood logically. Inexplicably, tragedies and pleasures will come and go, but, as Waddle's book reminds us, the "counsel of the Lord" is permanent.
Waddle will discuss his new book at Bookman/Bookwoman on June 5 at 11 a.m.
—Paul V. Griffith
