Psalms for Every Space
The Sons of Korah CDs were always playing. There was one CD player in the all-girls share house. We kept it in the kitchen, near the thrift store loveseat and the oversized armchair. One Sunday night we sat in the kitchen, drinking pink champagne and debating one oh-so-important theological point or another. Well, at least the other girls and their boyfriends were. Super wise, and not complete drinking novices like me, they could handle being filled with both the Spirit and bubbly spirits.
I sat upside down on the oversized armchair and listened as the 20-something college students threw around phrases like ‘praise reports’ and ‘the Jesus jump.’ Occasionally, the debate would die down and I’d hear Sons of Korah sing psalms and strum Dobro guitars. This is how we partied, good Christian style.
Whenever I hear Sons of Korah (or drink pink champagne while sitting, right way up, on an oversized armchair) I return to that small house. I’m there, back in that kitchen, wondering if all champagne tastes so pink and sweet (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). For a few moments, too short and fleeting, it’s the early 2000s again, and I’m 21, withdrawn and shy, and completely unable to hold my liquor.
I will remember you
Our memories are alive. They pull us back into the past; time machines that allow us to relive days, minutes, even the seconds. Our memories are tied to sounds, smells, people and pink champagne (or, at least, mine are). They’re imprinted on the significant places in our lives – your childhood home, your first share house, that path behind your best friend’s place where you’d play, wildly, freely, every summer.
My memories are mostly triggered by places. As the real estate agent says, it’s all location, location, location. As I drive by my childhood park, the softball fields where my team won the championship, the streets where I’d ride my bike, I fall back in time. I’m no longer a 30-something woman, wife and mother. I’m a child again. The past never stops. I’m still there, on the softball fields, riding through the streets, playing in the park.
Our memories are written in the earth, becoming part of the significant places in our lives. This can be great if your past is great. But if it isn’t, memories can be unwelcome. It can be painful to live where unwanted experiences are sunk deep into the concrete and the soil.
Thanks, Sons of Korah
I’ve memorised much of the Psalms. I’ve had no choice. When your housemates play the same CDs over and over again you start to remember the lyrics. And when these CDs are by a Christian band that sings the Psalms, and only the Psalms, you begin to learn a lot of scripture. The words of the Psalms are lodged in my brain. There is one that speaks to me when I move into spaces I’d rather not go.
Psalm 24 tells us that the earth is the Lord’s. Everything, every place, every rock, every piece of concrete, every mound of soil, is God’s. God owns the good places in our lives, the ones that we love to revisit. But He’s also the Lord of the spaces we’d rather forget. He’s there in the towns we don’t want to live in, the cities we don’t want to move to. We can find God in the beautiful spaces, and the ugly. In fact, it’s in the ugly places that God’s beauty can be more clearly seen.
As far as I know, Sons of Korah haven’t performed Psalm 104. Its words aren’t stamped on my mind to the tune of a wailing folk instrument or a bluesy guitar. But it’d make a great follow up to Psalm 24. I can imagine the band belting out, in a restrained but joyful tone, “What a wildly wonderful world, God! You made it all, with Wisdom at your side, made earth overflow with your wonderful creations.” (Psalm 104: 24–25, The Message)
Psalm 104 holds the key to moving into unwelcome spaces. This is how we find peace when we move to new places or return reluctantly to the old. We can redeem a space by asking God to show us He’s there, to show us the wonder of His creation in this place at this time.
In our lives we face uncertainty. Jobs come and go. We relocate. People move through our lives. We graduate and leave college share houses behind. Memories linger, the good and the bad. Whatever you’re facing, you don’t have to walk your path alone. Through community, through counselling, through God breathing His Spirit into the unwelcome spaces, we can transform the ugly into something beautiful.
Send out your Spirit in this place. Show us the wonder of your creation here. Push through the concrete and the soil scarred with pain, and make this space blossom and bloom for everyone who enters it.
