Wednesday, July 5, 2023

The Burning Word Book Club: What does Reverence Mean?

Welcome to the burning word book club!

We are in part four which is really the beginning of chapter two and this is the burning word bible study that we're going through right now and it's actually more of a book club study you can use it as a meditation but i also invite you to use it as conversation um just for how you digest the bible spirituality god the way in which you believe God wants to engage us in the world that's basically what the first three parts of this is is going through that first chapter and really laying the groundwork for what we're going to start discussing in this book.

So let's get started.   Chapter 2 is titled the word is real and that's the subtitle and the main title is reverence i was 19 years old before it dawned on me that the 23rd psalm was not written in english of course i had known for many years that the books my tradition called the old testament was written in hebrew and the books we called the new testament were written in greek but it wasn't until i was in college that a little window opened in my mind and i suddenly encountered the fundamental otherness of my bible's language the psalmist was not a 20 a late 20th century american the psalmist was not a young girl lying on a rubber line mattress in a college dorm room greeting the betrayal of a high school boyfriend and searching for some comfort among the words of a poem she had known since childhood you anoint my head with oil the psalm declared my cup overflows suddenly the bible's foreignness overwhelmed me...

The book i held in my hand had come to me down many twisting trails and through many fragmentations of language it was a miracle it was an oracle it was mine and not mine all at once my realization that the psalm was written in an ancient tongue i see now was the comfort i was seeking for when i tucked that suddenly strange text under my arm and walked outside with an inexplicable need to get moving i felt the trees and the very sidewalks holding me up.

 

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