Listen.
Sssssshhhh. Really, just listen.
Listen to the Psalms. Listen to all one hundred fifty of these ancient prayers — one psalm after another, one voice after another, without music or interlude, without commentary or homily. Just ssssshhh, listen and let the Psalms settle over your spirit with Hear My Prayer: The Audio Book of Psalms (Paraclete Press 2015).
It matters that we give voice to Scripture. And it matters that we listen to Scripture, not only with the ears of our hearts but also with the ears of our bodies, so that flesh and spirit hear together. Listening to the many different voices of Hear My Prayer, I realize this again. When lifted from the page to the ear, the Psalms come alive with emotion and we are reminded that prayer is the embodied expression of our lives to the Holy One. In the voices of Hear My Prayer, the Psalms echo with the joy and the gentleness, the sorrow and the trust of this thing called faith.
Listening to Hear My Prayer, individual psalms suddenly catch my ear and I wonder, “Have I never heard or read this psalm?!” Through the voice of Paula Huston, for example, Psalm 102 is surprisingly ethereal as I imagine God’s celestial perspective on the nations of the earth and on the fleeting nature of my days. Meanwhile Psalm 10, read by Jack Levison, sighs anew to my spirit. And Paul Quenon’s articulation of certain psalms reminds me of the rhythm of our prayers, of the ways that our hearts’ murmurs weave and dance and sway to the ear of God.
Then there is this line from Psalm 45, read by Margaret Manning Shull: “My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe” — oh! how have I missed the delight of this verse until now?
Hear My Prayer: The Audio Book of Psalms is an unexpected gift to my spirit. I who unapologetically surround myself constantly with sound — music at work, music in the car, television at home, conversations with colleagues and family and friends, plus the constant “noise” of social media — I find surprisingly restful stillness in listening to this collection of voices, to this collection of ancient prayers, to the spaces of silence around each word, to the calming tempo and timbre of the psalms given voice.
In full disclosure as I commend this newly-released audio book to you, I had the pleasure of recording three of the psalms for Hear My Prayer. And, in full disclosure, I’m really just one of the “ordinary Christians” of the audio book’s description: “The Psalms were written by human beings, and here, they are read by human beings — a wide range of ordinary and extraordinary Christians.” The list of more extraordinary readers includes such notables as James Martin SJ and Joan Chittister, Scot McKnight and Cathleen Falsani.
I pray that you will be blessed by Hear My Prayer as I have been.