Way back in 1992, Father Bede, monk and mystic, said that we are "now in the hour of God." He went on to explain that " the whole human race has now come to the moment when everything is at stake, when a vast shift of consciousness will have to take place on a massive scale in all societies and religions for the world to survive. Unless human life become centered on the awareness of a transcendent reality that embraces all humanity and the whole universe and at the same time transcends our present level of life and consciousness, there is little to hope for us."
Are we becoming centered on the awareness of a transcendent reality? The above quote comes from the book I have just received from England: Life in the Psalms: Contemporary Meaning in Ancient Texts by Patrick Woodhouse. Woodhouse tells us that the one thing we cannot escape in reading the Psalms is God. "They are shot through and through with the divine presence, the divine grace and the divine call. That is why, despite the difficulties of their culture context, they need to be valued and loved and known, not just as odd fragments but as whole texts, which, when deeply pondered can kindle faith afresh and reorientate a person's entire perspective." p. 8.
Woodhouse tells us that the psalms have this power "by totally assuming the reality of God."
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