Psalms for Skeptics

(101–150)

Kent Gramm

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781625648532
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879099
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Sparked by phrases from the book of Psalms, these poems question and occasionally affirm our everyday ideas about life, mortality, the afterlife, God, family, and belief. In vigorous contemporary language--complaining, lamenting, and wisecracking on everything from Job's wife to baseball, crows to angels, circus elephants to Mary Magdalene--but in traditional form, these sonnets, or little songs, "speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."

Psalm 119

Thy word have I hid in mine heart.

I sure hope it’s there—my heart—Galilee

and you waiting. I’d like to go fishing

and you are invited; just you and me

or really just me, finally done with wishing,

and content—because I have a hunch

that anywhere you are, the whole damn world

is there, everybody sweating for bench

in my little rowboat. I’m getting old

faster than I am learning how to pray,

but I would like to know what Mary knew

when she was at the tomb—she thought alone—

and Jesus rolled away the cold unknown

around her name: she had nothing to say.

The Holy Ghost spoke, and it was you;

the Church sat down around her stone by stone.

Open thou mine eyes

We’ve always been a thankful people here,

appreciating all the bounty loaded

on our forebears by an approving God:

the beautiful, ever-swallowed frontier—

the Cherokee were Philistines—and half

of Mexico cried out for a southern

border. It didn’t cost us much trouble.

We have canned the land like a fatted calf.

The other nations have done worse than this

and dreamed no dreams. But a land of promise

must have a lot of promises to keep:

must have a lot of strangers to take in

to walk its alabaster cities’ streets

and brush the chilly ghosts of Indians.

We have no vision here; the prophets all

are dead. We are doing fine, but the people

perish. Who can see them?—they are so small.

Let’s avoid the beginnings of evil

and plant a wall of gorgeous gardenias

white and rumpled like a writer’s wastebasket,

each one a beautiful failed scripture, thus

abasing violence to mere bad taste,

transforming resentment into fragrance

like a groping jolt of opium, pious

by design like a white Mercedes-Benz,

God’s comfort planted right between the eyes,

petals like page corners swirling around

a pollen-less center too pure for sound.

Then let the poor lapse into desuetude,

unused as violets, bodily assumed

by the moon in June. What then shall we do?

Nothing! but sing. Isn’t this the Good News?

At peace, at ease, in meditative quiet,

released like cool bees to our clammy cells,

buzzing our Ohms like sonnets gone riot,

electric with Nothing, with wha...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Psalm 101
• Psalm 102
• Psalm 103
• Psalm 104
• Psalm 105
• Psalm 106
• Psalm 107
• Psalm 108
• Psalm 109
• Psalm 110
• Psalm 111
• Psalm 112
• Psalm 114
• Psalm 115
• Psalm 116
• Psalm 117
• Psalm 118
• Psalm 119
• Psalm 120
• Psalm 121
• Psalm 122
• Psalm 123
• Psalm 124
• Psalm 125
• Psalm 126
• Psalm 127
• Psalm 128
• Psalm 129
• Psalm 130
• Psalm 131
• Psalm 132
• Psalm 133
• Psalm 134
• Psalm 135
• Psalm 136
• Psalm 137
• Psalm 138
• Psalm 139
• Psalm 140
• Psalm 141
• Psalm 142
• Psalm 143
• Psalm 143
• Psalm 144
• Psalm 145
• Psalm 146
• Psalm 147
• Psalm 148
• Psalm 149
• Psalm 150