Psalms and Practice: Worship, Virtue, and Authority (Connections)

The essays in Psalms and Practice explore how the notion of practice helps contemporary readers understand psalms in a new way. Practice, according to the authors, happens as faith seeks understanding through spiritual disciplines. These practices continue the work of the Holy Spirit — faith seeking understanding, understanding seeking embodiment through practice, and practice nurturing faith. Practice and the psalms are never far from the formation of the soul which takes place in a number of ways. The essays in Psalms and Practice look at three aspects of formation: prayer, how the psalms shape our faith through the process of liturgy, and how the psalms shape the preached word. Formation then occurs in contemplation, liturgy, and preaching, but it occurs in other action as well. Psalms and Practice also explores those elements of practice and the psalms by looking at the practice of translation as a way of practicing the psalms and examining other ways to relate the psalms to our modern lives. Psalms and Practice is the result of conversations of scholars, who are also committed church people, at work in the field of Psalms research. These scholars came together for three days to share their papers and a time of prayer in both Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions. The participants noted that the combination of conversation on the psalms and the practice of reading and praying the psalms in worship enriched the conversation of reading the psalms in the discussion of the papers.