James 24:7

lV

Reading and praying the Psalms puts us in the company of all the saints who have preceded us.

I read this morning that Etta Baker has died at the age of 90.   Etta Baker was a Piedmont Blues guitar player who influenced every finger-style guitar player there is- whether he or she knows it or not.  Any picker who plays a Merle Travis lick or even a Chet Atkins riff can thank Etta Baker for inspiring those guys to pass along the pickin'.   

Few people outside the fingerstyle or blues community have ever heard of Etta Baker. (She spent most of her working years laboring in the Buster Brown factory in North Carolina)   However, her finger plucks, picks, and pulls reverbrate through  generations of players. 

Of course, each of those players adds their own twists and turns.  Every so often one of them, usually some kid still wet behind the thumbpick, brings along an innovation and leaves us older guys scratching our heads wondering "why we never thought of that"- if we can even make out what the kid is doing.

However, true innovation is rare.  I suppose you could say true innovation- that is, bringing something new to the world- happens...oh...once in a not-ever. 

Most pickers are part of a tradition and are damn proud of it.  To be told that you played something as well as Chet or with as much life as Merle Travis or in the style of Doc Watson is be truly complimented.  To be told that you are an innovator is good too...but only if the innovation pays homage to the Ettas, Chets, Merles and Docs who have gone before you.

Playing with the pickers of the past is a fine way to spend an lazy evening or a lifetime.

To read and pray the Psalms is to pray with all of the saints who have gone before you.  You may be praying with your grandma, or your great, great grandpa.  You will certainly be praying with Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.  You will also be praying with the Apostle Paul and Peter, James and John.  You will utter the words that helped shape Jesus' prayers.  You will weep and praise with all those Hebrew saints who worshipped God in the Temple, the synagogues and  out on the hillside.  

Think about it: It is quite something to utter the words of David, the King- the man after God's own heart.

When we read the Psalms...better...when we pray the Psalms we enter the company of the beloved saints of God.  Their voices become our voices; their habits become our habits.

I firmly believe that many of us have shot ourselves in the foot by falling so deeply into the "contemporary."  Contemporary music.  Contemporary worship.  Contemporary ministry.  Contemporary..."with the times."  We have especially shot ourselves in the foot if we are so arrogant to think that what we have brought upon the earth is anything truly innovative.

Recently I've rekindled my interest in poetry.  I dug around and found a book by the American poet, Mary Oliver.  Here is what she says about the "contemporary" as it applies to young poets and their poetry:

"...since you want to be a contemporary poet, you do not want to be too much under the influence of what is old, attaching to the terms the idea that old is old hat-out of date.  You imagine you should surround yourself with modern only.  It is an error.  The truly contemporary creative force is something that is built out of the past, but with a difference.

Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked. It is created in imitation of what already exists and is already admired.  There is, in other words, nothing new about it.  To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain.  Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air." (A Poetry Handbook, p. 11-12)

When we read and pray the Psalms we enter into a tradition and we praise and cry and rage with that great cloud of saints who cheer us on and wait for us to join them.