AN INTERPRETATION OF PSALM 23
Thomas Merton
My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going.
I cannot see the road ahead of me
and I do not know for certain
where it will end.
Nor do I know myself,
and the fact that I think
I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe
that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always.
Though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death,
I will not fear,
for you are ever with me,
and will never leave me
to face my perils alone.
A PRAYER FOR A REMEMBERED DEATH (for Ash Wednesday)
A prayer/psalm by the Rev. Micah Bucey (Judson Memorial Church/UCC in NYC)
I was hemming and hawing about my fears:
Will my body be safe?
Will my mind be safe?
Will my heart and my lungs be safe?
Should I make this choice?
Should I raise my voice?
Should I put my privilege and my life on the line?
And my sweet sister smiled and said,
“I once met a woman who shared that,
When her fear for her own life
Started to pull her back from actually living,
She stopped and said to herself,
‘I am already dead.’”
And my brain broke open.
I am already dead.
I am dust and I am stardust,
A fragile collection of glitter crumbs,
Ages-old, already honed by countless supernovas,
Who decided to come together and dance,
For a short, sacred time,
As one magical me-made shape.
My cells and my soul will move together
Until the moment they tear apart and drift off
To become another star, another shape,
Another fear-filled, already-dead, living thing.
So live.
You are already dead.
And every tiny, shiny particle
That makes up your parts
Knows how to dance a revolution,
Because they’ve done it all,
Endured it all,
And danced it all before.
You are new and you are infinite
And you are finite.
And that is freedom.
So move with the courage of
The supernovas who continue to shape this world.
You were born to die
Like the brave beings who have blazed before,
Who looked fear in the eye and said,
“I am already dead, so I’m gonna go out living.”
You are dust and you are stardust
And to both will you return.
So turn it out while you’re here,
Feel the fear,
But also feel the fire
That is not only burning you alive,
But burning you to life.
Sunday, March 1, 2026
The Second Sunday in Lent
Psalms New and Old
1.
Last weekend, during our celebration of Henry Smith’s life and spirit, one of Henry’s friends shared a lovely story about the two of them riding a bus across Cuba some years ago. Some of you were here to hear it. You could see in her eyes that this was a story she just had to tell. And she remembered the bump-bump-bumping of the old bus on the roughly paved Cuban roadway. And she remembered the two of them sharing a knowing look (she and Henry) as their bladders—bladders of a certain age, of course—registered each and every bump and quietly, but urgently, insisted on attention. And action.
And then Henry’s friend remembered how at last they prevailed on the bus driver to pull over for the two of them, in the Cuban countryside. And she remembered—with a certain gleam in her eye—the two of them dashing out into the grassy fields of Cuba to relieve themselves at last. She remembered their shared sense of relief and even joy. In the grassy, recently irrigated fields of Cuba. And then she might have said something like, “I’ll always remember Henry Smith as I knew him that day!” Glad and giddy. And we all laughed with her. A happy and healthy and Henry Smith kind of laugh.
And then, as fate would have it, or the liturgy that day, we read the 23rd Psalm – out loud. Together. It was in the program. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads beside still waters; he restores my soul.” Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the Holy Spirit does her magic and makes the old book new.
Because it struck me then that this beloved psalm isn’t a relic of somebody else’s faith, or a sober artifact of a distant time. It works because it captures so honestly the gratitude of a beleaguered soul. It works because it reflects soulful intimacy—discovered in faith, shared with friends, awakened in green pastures and beside still waters. We are created for communion. We are created for community. We wander away. We wander back. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads beside still waters; he restores my soul.”
And sometimes you need a bus driver to pull over on a bumpy Cuban highway. And a friend to run with. And in these ways, and so many more, God is with you, in the midst of the ordinary; in the swollen bladders of your old age; in the dried-out, grassy fields that welcome your need and your gratitude. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” We have all that we need. We are enough.
For ever and ever, I’ll remember that image of Henry Smith, running into the fields and sauntering back to the bus happy and whole. Smiling at his friend.
2.
Now Thomas Merton comes to the old psalm in a very different way, of course. The poem that Katie’s read this morning is his 1960 interpretation. Out of his own midlife experience of the 23rd Psalm. And it seems he’s wrestling here with a sense of profound uncertainty and bewilderment. The kind of bewilderment that’s familiar, even unnerving, to most of us.
“My Lord God,” he begins, “I have no idea where I am going. I cannot see the road ahead of me, and I do not know for certain where it will end.” And while that’s raw and honest enough, it’s this next line that names what sometimes seems unnameable: “Nor do I know myself…” “Nor do I know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.” I mean, I know this is New England, but does somebody want to say, Amen? In the sixty years since this poem was written, it has given voice to a strange dis-ease so many have in the religious life. “Nor do I really know myself…” And its genius, I think, is in its ragged humility: We can love God with our whole hearts, and still despair for confirmation of God’s call in our spirits or God’s direction in our lives. We can desire God with our whole hearts, and still wonder if what we’re hearing is verifiable and true. “Nor do I really know myself…”
As you know, these forty days of Lent correspond to the forty days Jesus spends in the wilderness—just after his baptism and before he begins to build his movement of bread breakers and boundary busters and disciples. For forty days out there, Jesus fasts and prays, wonders and wanders around, rambles the grassy fields of his homeland and wrestles with his faith and its implications.
And so it ought to be in our own practice. Our Lenten journeys embrace reflection and discernment, and even confession and struggle in our spiritual lives and our walk with Jesus. We too can welcome uncertainty, and bewilderment, and even confusion along the way. In fact, it has to be so. Because there’s so much we don’t know. Because there’s so much that’s just not clear.
Isn’t it curious that Jesus goes fasting after his baptism. After he receives God’s blessing, God’s thrilling blessing, and the anointing of Spirit in the Jordan River, after he’s been named and claimed by Love, after all that, he goes out to the wilderness not to picnic, but to struggle. The blessing itself seems to insist on this, to provoke his own season of temptation and wonderment. Faith and doubt go hand in hand. For Jesus, yes; and for you and me too.
“Nor do I know myself,” says Thomas Merton in his psalm, “and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.” Christianity—at its very heart—insists on this kind of humility and openness. I don’t know. I need help knowing. And prayer then can bear our questions, and voice our vulnerabilities, and offer up our “not knowing.” That we might meet God in the wilderness. In the questions themselves.
3.
These lovely quilts around us—populating the pews this season, near enough that you can touch them: they remind us that there is also companionship in the wilderness, even warmth and tenderness in the wilderness as we wander. If we seek with our whole hearts. If we open up to the unknown. If we surrender to God’s grace.
I’m so grateful to our Liturgical Arts Team for these quilts and for their vision of a Lenten journey that is both demanding and comforting, a spiritual practice that welcomes temptation, but relies on God’s friendship in the midst of our doubting and struggling. The wilderness is indeed a landscape of bewilderment, sometimes even confession, and often temptation. But each one of these quilts is like a prayer stitched in real time, a promise of divine companionship and care. Each one, an expression of another’s creativity, an unseen friend’s devotion.
So reach out while you’re here these next few weeks, and touch one. Know that God’s grace is waiting for you. In the wilderness. In whatever questions you’re asking these days. And surrender to it. To that grace and peace. Thomas Merton says, “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire.” Let that be your prayer.
4.
When I first read Micah Bucey’s prayer—mind you, this one was written just two weeks ago—my brain broke open. OK. That’s a line I’ve lifted from the poem. But I think you know what I mean. Micah’s a UCC pastor, and obviously a poet, who lives in New York City and serves a wildly creative congregation in Manhattan. And they're committed to reclaiming the psalms for contemporary worship and 21st century struggle. And they spend a good bit of time writing their own. Expressions of raw wonder. Or piercing lamentation. Or tender offerings of human gratitude. Micah’s prolific. And they've reminded me that the biblical tradition isn’t a closed or limited one: but that we join that tradition, we participate in it, as we write our own psalms and offer up our own prayers and live into the mysteries of faith together.
And in this psalm, the one we’ve read this morning, Micah takes my breath away. They remind me, they remind us that we can and we must live fully and bravely and joyfully in the very crux of contradiction and paradox. This is both the Lenten journey and Easter’s great mystery.
I mean, listen to this:
“Because every tiny, shiny particle / that makes up our parts / knows how to dance a revolution.” I mean, did anyone out there need good news when you showed up for church today? Faith means knowing in the marrow of your bones that you are created for life, for communion, for freedom. “Because every tiny, shiny particle / that makes up your parts / knows how to dance a revolution.” That one line is the gospel of Jesus Christ. No doubt. The gospel of Jesus Christ.
You do not have to know everything to dance. You do not have to have it all figured out to dance. If you’ve made a mistake or two along the way—even a great, big, nasty one—you can still dance. You’re made to dance. If you’re overwhelmed by the world’s bad news, the sad news, the wars and rumors of war that jump from our screens every day—you can still dance. You’re made to dance. “Because every tiny, shiny particle / that makes up your parts / knows how to dance a revolution.”
So embrace the mystery of it all. Wander knowingly in the wilderness for as long as it takes. Confess all the things you wish you knew, but don’t. Revel in uncertainty. Let this be your Lenten practice. And write a poem, write a psalm about it, if you like. But by all means, dance. By all means, dance. Because you know how.
Amen and Ashe.
Psalms New and Old
1.
Last weekend, during our celebration of Henry Smith’s life and spirit, one of Henry’s friends shared a lovely story about the two of them riding a bus across Cuba some years ago. Some of you were here to hear it. You could see in her eyes that this was a story she just had to tell. And she remembered the bump-bump-bumping of the old bus on the roughly paved Cuban roadway. And she remembered the two of them sharing a knowing look (she and Henry) as their bladders—bladders of a certain age, of course—registered each and every bump and quietly, but urgently, insisted on attention. And action.
And then Henry’s friend remembered how at last they prevailed on the bus driver to pull over for the two of them, in the Cuban countryside. And she remembered—with a certain gleam in her eye—the two of them dashing out into the grassy fields of Cuba to relieve themselves at last. She remembered their shared sense of relief and even joy. In the grassy, recently irrigated fields of Cuba. And then she might have said something like, “I’ll always remember Henry Smith as I knew him that day!” Glad and giddy. And we all laughed with her. A happy and healthy and Henry Smith kind of laugh.
And then, as fate would have it, or the liturgy that day, we read the 23rd Psalm – out loud. Together. It was in the program. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads beside still waters; he restores my soul.” Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the Holy Spirit does her magic and makes the old book new.
Because it struck me then that this beloved psalm isn’t a relic of somebody else’s faith, or a sober artifact of a distant time. It works because it captures so honestly the gratitude of a beleaguered soul. It works because it reflects soulful intimacy—discovered in faith, shared with friends, awakened in green pastures and beside still waters. We are created for communion. We are created for community. We wander away. We wander back. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads beside still waters; he restores my soul.”
And sometimes you need a bus driver to pull over on a bumpy Cuban highway. And a friend to run with. And in these ways, and so many more, God is with you, in the midst of the ordinary; in the swollen bladders of your old age; in the dried-out, grassy fields that welcome your need and your gratitude. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” We have all that we need. We are enough.
For ever and ever, I’ll remember that image of Henry Smith, running into the fields and sauntering back to the bus happy and whole. Smiling at his friend.
2.
Now Thomas Merton comes to the old psalm in a very different way, of course. The poem that Katie’s read this morning is his 1960 interpretation. Out of his own midlife experience of the 23rd Psalm. And it seems he’s wrestling here with a sense of profound uncertainty and bewilderment. The kind of bewilderment that’s familiar, even unnerving, to most of us.
“My Lord God,” he begins, “I have no idea where I am going. I cannot see the road ahead of me, and I do not know for certain where it will end.” And while that’s raw and honest enough, it’s this next line that names what sometimes seems unnameable: “Nor do I know myself…” “Nor do I know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.” I mean, I know this is New England, but does somebody want to say, Amen? In the sixty years since this poem was written, it has given voice to a strange dis-ease so many have in the religious life. “Nor do I really know myself…” And its genius, I think, is in its ragged humility: We can love God with our whole hearts, and still despair for confirmation of God’s call in our spirits or God’s direction in our lives. We can desire God with our whole hearts, and still wonder if what we’re hearing is verifiable and true. “Nor do I really know myself…”
As you know, these forty days of Lent correspond to the forty days Jesus spends in the wilderness—just after his baptism and before he begins to build his movement of bread breakers and boundary busters and disciples. For forty days out there, Jesus fasts and prays, wonders and wanders around, rambles the grassy fields of his homeland and wrestles with his faith and its implications.
And so it ought to be in our own practice. Our Lenten journeys embrace reflection and discernment, and even confession and struggle in our spiritual lives and our walk with Jesus. We too can welcome uncertainty, and bewilderment, and even confusion along the way. In fact, it has to be so. Because there’s so much we don’t know. Because there’s so much that’s just not clear.
Isn’t it curious that Jesus goes fasting after his baptism. After he receives God’s blessing, God’s thrilling blessing, and the anointing of Spirit in the Jordan River, after he’s been named and claimed by Love, after all that, he goes out to the wilderness not to picnic, but to struggle. The blessing itself seems to insist on this, to provoke his own season of temptation and wonderment. Faith and doubt go hand in hand. For Jesus, yes; and for you and me too.
“Nor do I know myself,” says Thomas Merton in his psalm, “and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.” Christianity—at its very heart—insists on this kind of humility and openness. I don’t know. I need help knowing. And prayer then can bear our questions, and voice our vulnerabilities, and offer up our “not knowing.” That we might meet God in the wilderness. In the questions themselves.
3.
These lovely quilts around us—populating the pews this season, near enough that you can touch them: they remind us that there is also companionship in the wilderness, even warmth and tenderness in the wilderness as we wander. If we seek with our whole hearts. If we open up to the unknown. If we surrender to God’s grace.
I’m so grateful to our Liturgical Arts Team for these quilts and for their vision of a Lenten journey that is both demanding and comforting, a spiritual practice that welcomes temptation, but relies on God’s friendship in the midst of our doubting and struggling. The wilderness is indeed a landscape of bewilderment, sometimes even confession, and often temptation. But each one of these quilts is like a prayer stitched in real time, a promise of divine companionship and care. Each one, an expression of another’s creativity, an unseen friend’s devotion.
So reach out while you’re here these next few weeks, and touch one. Know that God’s grace is waiting for you. In the wilderness. In whatever questions you’re asking these days. And surrender to it. To that grace and peace. Thomas Merton says, “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire.” Let that be your prayer.
4.
When I first read Micah Bucey’s prayer—mind you, this one was written just two weeks ago—my brain broke open. OK. That’s a line I’ve lifted from the poem. But I think you know what I mean. Micah’s a UCC pastor, and obviously a poet, who lives in New York City and serves a wildly creative congregation in Manhattan. And they're committed to reclaiming the psalms for contemporary worship and 21st century struggle. And they spend a good bit of time writing their own. Expressions of raw wonder. Or piercing lamentation. Or tender offerings of human gratitude. Micah’s prolific. And they've reminded me that the biblical tradition isn’t a closed or limited one: but that we join that tradition, we participate in it, as we write our own psalms and offer up our own prayers and live into the mysteries of faith together.
And in this psalm, the one we’ve read this morning, Micah takes my breath away. They remind me, they remind us that we can and we must live fully and bravely and joyfully in the very crux of contradiction and paradox. This is both the Lenten journey and Easter’s great mystery.
I mean, listen to this:
I am already dead.Try that verse out on your friends! “What did you talk about in church today?”
I am dust and I am stardust.
A fragile collection of glitter crumbs,
Ages-old, already honed by countless supernovas,
Who decided to come together and dance,
For a short, sacred time,
As one magical, me-made shape.
I am already dead.That’s church? But, yes! This is both the Lenten journey and Easter’s great mystery. The great and bewildering paradox of human existence and faith itself. Yes, we are already dead. Yes, we were born to die. But that’s not all.
I am dust and I am stardust.
A fragile collection of glitter crumbs,
Ages-old, already honed by countless supernovas,
Who decided to come together and dance,
For a short, sacred time,
As one magical, me-made shape.
“Because every tiny, shiny particle / that makes up our parts / knows how to dance a revolution.” I mean, did anyone out there need good news when you showed up for church today? Faith means knowing in the marrow of your bones that you are created for life, for communion, for freedom. “Because every tiny, shiny particle / that makes up your parts / knows how to dance a revolution.” That one line is the gospel of Jesus Christ. No doubt. The gospel of Jesus Christ.
You do not have to know everything to dance. You do not have to have it all figured out to dance. If you’ve made a mistake or two along the way—even a great, big, nasty one—you can still dance. You’re made to dance. If you’re overwhelmed by the world’s bad news, the sad news, the wars and rumors of war that jump from our screens every day—you can still dance. You’re made to dance. “Because every tiny, shiny particle / that makes up your parts / knows how to dance a revolution.”
So embrace the mystery of it all. Wander knowingly in the wilderness for as long as it takes. Confess all the things you wish you knew, but don’t. Revel in uncertainty. Let this be your Lenten practice. And write a poem, write a psalm about it, if you like. But by all means, dance. By all means, dance. Because you know how.
Amen and Ashe.
