flinging them back before his growing light
Today’s poem from my new sequence is a response to Psalm 6 from the Book of Common Prayer Psalter. Here are links to the earlier poems in this series: V III and IV II I
This is one of the darker psalms, and the psalmist seems at once fearful of God and forgetful of his mercy, so it opens:
- O LORD, rebuke me not in thine indignation: neither chasten me in thy displeasure.
- Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak: O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed
But the psalmist works through these fears and misgivings and is able to say just before the end of the psalm:
The Lord hath heard my petition: the Lord will receive my prayer.
It is this honesty about difficulty, fear and misgiving which makes the psalter so compelling and gives its moments of joy and recovery their full force and authority. In my own response to this psalm I picked up a phrase from verse 5 that ‘in death no man remembreth thee’ and used it to explore the kind of forgetfulness and amnesia that sometimes darkens our spiritual life. One function both of scripture and of poetry is to re-awaken our good memories of God. You may like to look at the psalm alongside the poem. As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title.
Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day?
I feel my weakness, all my bones are vexed
And all the faith in me seems worn away
As though I’ve lost Love’s memory. Perplexed
By false complexities, I mime faith’s part
I keep the book but cannot read the text
Unless you come, and write it in my heart,
Unless you help me read it through my tears
And hear me out, and, hearing, heal my hurt.
How could I think you punished me? My fears
Just magnified the shadows that I cast
Till you were lost in shadow too. Love hears
My cries and clears the shadows of my past
Flinging them back before his growing light
Until I recognise his face at last.
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Malcolm Guite 
An enlightening poem again. Thank you. I do hope you will publish this series.
David
Thanks David yes I hope to bring these out as a book if I am able to complete them
I do hope you will complete and publish a full set of these reflections on the Psalms. I always love your poems and have quoted them in sermons, used them in classes, and spread the word in many ways. But over my 40 years of priesting I have encountered many dreadful spiritual missteps engendered and encouraged by a literal reading of the psalms and have found assisting in people’s recovery from that challenging. You are helping to restore in me kindly feelings toward the Psalter and I would love to be able to pass this imagined book along to those led into ‘hating their/our/God’s en enemies’ by their traditional reading of the ‘difficult’ psalms. Thank you as always for the blessings you bring to my life and so many others.
Thanks for this. Yes I hope to complete and publish these, God willing, and yes one has to rise to the challenge of the difficult psalms. CS Lewis has some very helpful reflections on that
I lost my 43-year old daughter to cancer almost 6 years ago. I this reflection, I hear a beautiful reminder of the need to recognize God’s love in the midst of grief.
My comment should say: “In this reflection….”
Thank you for that moving testimony. Every blessing to you in your grief M
A large undertaking started with your usual thought and craft. We have to remember that David and the other psalmists did not have the advantages we have in matters being settled by Christ’s work being done. But we may feel as they did that God is angry.
There is so much of the spirit of Christ in the psalms.
(Amused to note that psalmists was auto corrected to pessimists! Not with the God that they knew!)
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