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Poetry, Prayer and Meditation
Abstract
Both poetry and prayer have the ability to move the imagination into a meditative space. Poetry, like prayer, can alter our perceptions, deepen our appreciation of the commonplace, and collapse the distance between everyday life and a more numinous experience. Prayer, like poetry, is a deeply imaginal experience that opens us to mystery, to the ineffable by allowing us a deeper felt sense of the created world.
The Psalms were composed for oral performance, and many today believe they should be restored to their performance vitality. “Translation for performance” requires many concepts to be considered, one of which is how the audience (or receptor community) will use the translated text. In the case of translating poetry, these considerations often point to the value of literary-rhetorical translation, which captures the poetical beauty and persuasive power of the original. Also, translating from an oral text and following the form of local poetic genres facilitates ready application of psalms. In this paper, empirical studies illustrate some ways in which psalms have been used recently with communities in South Africa: in corporate worship, in personal prayer, and with sectoral groups. Translators need constantly to keep their eye on the end game, to ensure the translated psalms facilitate a living conversation between people and God, as the ancient poems did.
This study describes how the Psalms can be used in psychotherapy. The Psalms are examined within a historical context, and their structure and content evaluated for applicability in contemporary settings. A theoretical frame is created for the use of the Psalms in therapy. This study includes a heuristic research process in which the researcher read the Psalms and wrote poetic responses. The data was analysed alongside a similar poetic response to the Psalms—Daniel Berrigan's Uncommon prayer: A book of psalms. Finally, suggestions, based on this phenomenological study, are provided for those choosing to use this literary text as “a therapy of words”. This study offers a theory for using language in therapeutic contexts, the identification of archetypes in the Psalms and a procedure for conducting a heuristic exploration of texts for therapeutic use.
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