Psalms of the Tao

Back in February I began praying the psalms, meditating upon the psalms, and rewriting the Psalms each morning. It is a time-honored spiritual practice among Christians. At that time I wrote a blog post about it entitled Rewriting the Psalms.  

It began as a Lenten exercise. I ambitiously hoped to do all 150 psalms of the Bible in 150 days, which is roughly five months. Nine months later and on the verge of Advent, I have finished half of them. Even that feels hasty. I am sharing the end result as a book entitled Psalms of the Tao. 

My intention was to replicate what I had done with my Christian version of the Tao Te Ching, entitled The Tao of Christ. That was a Christian interpretation of the Chinese classic. This new work is a Taoist interpretation of the Hebrew psalms, which are beloved by both Jews and Christians as Holy Scripture. It is a nondual rendition of the biblical Book of Psalms.  

Writing this was an evolving process. At first I approached the task as a paraphrase of the psalms, much like Kenneth Taylor’s Living Bible or Eugene Petersons The Message. I tried to stick close to the meaning and intent of the biblical text.  After a while I realized that I needed to go deeper. I needed to address the earthy anguish of the psalmists from the nondual perspective of the transcendent harmony of the Tao. I also wanted to pay tribute to Christian images and language. 

At the time my wife was using a book in her daily devotions entitled Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness by Nan Merrill. The author pens original psalms inspired by the biblical psalms.  Her psalms had the same theme as the biblical psalms, but otherwise they bore very little resemblance to them. I began to do that as well. Here is an example. It is my rendition of Psalm 68 entitled “What is the Way?” (“Way” is the English translation for Tao.) 

Like smoke is dispersed by a breeze,  

so is self dissolved by Spirit.  

It melts like ice near a fire.  

The remnants of the individual  

melt in the presence of God.  

Those who know the Way,  

remain as space remains   

when a bucket is emptied.  

  

The Way is the Father of all things, 

the Mother of the heavens and the earth.

The Way is the dwelling place of all creatures,

the family of the homeless,

the wealth of the penniless, 

water to the thirsty 

and bread to the hungry.

The Way is the God of theists

and the godlessness of atheists.

The Way is a mountain to the hiker

and an ocean to sailors,

the song of singers and the art of artists.

The Way is the All in all,

the One from whom we come

and unto whom we return.

Blessed be the Way.

If you are interested in reading more Psalms of the Tao, I am offering the Kindle version of the book free on Amazon for two days: Saturday and Sunday. (The paperback edition is not yet available.) Even if you do not own a Kindle, you can read it on your iPhone, tablet or laptop by downloading Amazon’s free Kindle app for your device. To access the link to the book, click on the image or title of the book in this post.