Psalm 131—An Altar You Burn Your Fears On

"Like a weaned child is my soul within me."

Hi, if you are just joining us, the Darkling Psalter is a project to create renditions of the Psalms (artistic rewordings based in the original Hebrew), notes, commentary, and original poems to pair with each one.

You can catch up with previous posts here: 1, 8, 14, 19, 22, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 42, 46, 51, 53, 73, 74, 84, 86, 88, 107, 121, 130, 137, 142, 147, and the Guided Tour.

Rendition of Psalm 131

O Lord, my heart is poor and lowly.
I am like the meek and the mourning.
I do not chase the things that surpass me.
I have calmed and quieted my soul.
Like a weaned child with its mother;
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O people of God, wait on the Lord
From now to forevermore.

Notes on the rendition of Psalm 131

The more I read Psalm 131, the more I thought about the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. I couldn’t help but draw them closer together in this rendition. The two passages are tuned to the same key. For example, the peacemakers of the beatitudes become children of God, while the psalmist rests his soul with the Lord like a child with its mother. The psalmist lowers his eyes in meekness and the meek of the beatitudes inherit the earth. The psalmist cultivates a poverty of spirit and the poor in spirit find the kingdom of God given to them.

So I changed “My eyes are not raised too high” from the psalm to “I am like the meek and mourning.” I changed “My heart is not lifted up” to “My heart is poor and lowly.”

Poem for Psalm 131—An Altar You Burn Your Fears On

“The quiet of the morning is an altar you burn your fears on.” —Anonymous

It is hot but before the heat.
The grass smells like Summer grass.
The coffee is ticking away.
My wife is there, doing the morning things.
There is a book I’ve been meaning to read
That I am not reading.
The trees are tinseled with Spanish moss
And thrumming with insects.
The little flies are hovering 
On the water in the slanted sunlight.
And no one saw the fish jump but me. 

Notes on the Poem

There isn’t much to say about the poem except that after a series of long poems, I wanted to make a short one to pair with a short psalm.

The poem is a handful of images that have been sitting in my “lines for future poems” file since visiting a lakehouse this Summer. When I opened the file to look for a response to Psalm 131, the poem almost wrote itself.

Give the Poem a Title

I’ll title this poem in a couple of days if I don’t hear from you, but I’m leaving the first pick for readers. The naming convention for these poems is that the title must come from a line of the poem.

Send your suggestions to andymatthewpatton@gmail(dot)com or leave them in the comments.

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Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash