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A Living Body of Poetry

Reading and listening to the news makes the Psalms come to life. Children threatened with separation from their families, international tensions, indigenous people displaced from their homeland. Even in this too-brief sampling of common headline topics a person can find plenty of reason, as the psalmist did in his own context, to shake a fist at heaven, tear one's garments, beg for mercy and cry out for justice.

When I am caught up in my own mostly comfortable life, the Psalms are hard to reach, both their anguish and their ecstasy remote from my daily grind. As soon as I graze the surface of human suffering, however, the words of the Psalter become vivid, potent, a living body of poetry pulsing with human feeling and desire.

Here is at least one good reason to read both the news and the Psalms: to remember that I am part of the human family, which is also to remember my responsibility for the welfare of that family.

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