\nLaurance Wieder
\nChapters into Verse: Poetry in English Inspired by the Bible<\/em><\/p>\n
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I have long felt sorry for Psalm 149, one of the concluding, Pentateuch-imitating collection of five praise psalms that closes the canonical psalter. How often has its page been turned in haste\u2014often by a musician\u2014to get to the symphonic glories of Psalm 150? How difficult to be the penultimate entry of praise.<\/p>\n
\u201cPenultimate praise\u201d is one way, perhaps, to describe all of life. Any hum or strum, every song or cry, each word enfleshed by those of us baptized into the Word-made-flesh will never truly be our final one. It can only be, at best, our next-to-last act of praise before we go to the place of eternal praise.<\/p>\n
The rabbis taught that the very letters of the Torah, written down by the scribes, pulsed with the divinity of God\u2019s living word. And we also know this: filled with the Spirit of Baptism\u2019s waters, we do not praise mere letters, but we praise and proclaim and pulse with the very Wisdom who is their source.<\/p>\n
Whenever I reach a moment in life that can be viewed as a conclusion, I turn to Psalm 149, the penultimate entry in Israel\u2019s psalter. Now is such a moment, as this is my last regular contribution to the PrayTell blog. I hasten to state that this is in no way connected to the coming changes here; for nearly a year this has seemed like a necessary step. It began to feel as though I was in danger of becoming the \u201cwriter without spirit\u201d who could not even truly praise a single graced letter.<\/p>\n
I am grateful for the original invitation to write for this blog, grateful for the growth it has necessitated and inspired, grateful for what wisdom it will still bring us.<\/p>\n
In this, as in all things, let us now move on together, pulsing with the divine, living word, toward our destiny of ultimate praise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is my last regular contribution to the PrayTell blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":62078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[526],"class_list":["post-62075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-psalms"],"yoast_head":"\n