YES! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 8/20/2023

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. 

Yea in this case, does not mean YIPPEE. It is an ancient form of YES—an affirmation rather than a negation? Of death? No, simply the shadow of death in which we all walk daily as we age and grow and love and play and sorrow and groan and keep walking on crutches or in wheelchairs—or simply sit quietly and look out the window to watch birds fly, thus knowing that we all are winged of soul. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

In this shadow we fear no evil. Why? Because God walks alongside us. We do not see God exactly, but we intuit the closeness of a Presence, perhaps even within our own depths, like a soul.  Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of the book When Bad Things Happen To Good People, wrote with clarity and courage about his pain having a son with the condition called progeria, premature aging. I heard Rabbi Kushner speak once in a hall near Boston.  Kushner invited us to notice that the psalm is all about God who is my shepherd. God guides, guards, pokes and prods, nurtures, and restores my soul daily.  

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Kushner pointed out that the third person He for God in Hebrew changes to the second person familiar Thou. I fear no evil For thou art with me. It is not He who is with me but thou. The change startles. God is intimate, closer than we’d imagined. Only at death? No. Every single day of Life always shadowed by death.

Bad things do happen to good people all the time. Does it mean there is no evil? No. No death? No. Does it mean that God doesn’t care? No. Does it mean that God chooses not to control evil?  Yes. Does it mean that we can control evil? No. It simply means we are never alone on the hazardous path we call Life. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. 

God neither prevents nor eliminates evil. God simply stays with us, provides a presence of lovingkindness. God chooses loving connection over control. Would you rather have a God who offers total safety, protection from any of life’s many hazards, from the worst to the minor, or would you rather have a God who is familiar enough with you to call you THOU as you call God THOU??

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. 

Psalm 23, Beloved Prayer Song Re-potentiated

A word is dead when it is said
Some say
I say it just begins to live
That day
        Emily Dickinson, 1924

Hear an old favorite psalm with just a few fresh words that change its complexion. 

Psalm 23 translation, Pamela Greenberg The Complete Psalms

God is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.
You lay me down in lush meadows.

You guide me toward tranquil waters,
reviving my soul.

You lead me down paths of righteousness,
for that is your way.

And when I walk through the valley, overshadowed by death,
I will fear no harm, for you are with me

Your rod and your staff—they comfort me,
You spread a table before me
in face of my greatest fears.

You drench my head with oil;
my cup overflows the brim.

Surely goodness and kindness
will accompany me all the days of my life

and I will dwell in the house of the Holy
for the length of my days.


The psalms are prayers—startlingly honest emotionally. No feelings are absent from these prayers, even violent ones, the ones that let us know where and how we are hurt and want to hurt back. Yet psalms are also poetry and we chant them. Pamela Greenberg has translated the psalms in creative new ways without allowing them to lose their poetic power and spirituality.

I love familiar words that lull me; I love fresh words to awaken me even more. These latter force me to pay attention, to tune in. That’s how I grow. Even in discomfort, there is soul. Besides, who says scripture must always comfort or edify?  Poetic words soothe and disturb in equal proportion, and psalms are poetry.
                                         *  *  * *

The Rev. Dr. Judith Fentress Williams, Old Testament professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, spoke to the Massachusetts clergy recently about the Old Testament—its value and its power, its connectedness with the fullness of earthly expression and experience. “Don’t be afraid of it. Preach from it,” she said.

I’ve always loved Old Testament. It was required in seminary, and the very first course I took at Yale Divinity School. The instructor began in solemn tones; “In the beginning, God potentiated……….. 

I wrote that down and tried to still my heart. Potentiated felt more powerful than created. It signaled the spiritual power behind/within everything that lives breathes and has being. It spoke to me of God’s agenda: ongoing potentiation. Whenever you are potentiated, by anything at all, you awaken. You feel suddenly lifted….in a word, resurrected. It’s a scary and a wonderful feeling.

The Spirit of God potentiates Life in the beginning, at the end, and in every second in between.
                                               *  * *  *


What do you notice in Greenberg’s translation of Psalm 23 that is different from what your ears are used to hearing? Say it aloud.

This translation is familiar —and brand new. The first thing I notice is: “God is my shepherd”— not the Lord. God is a name not a noun. God is free of royal role and all its accoutrements.

Then I notice is “there is nothing I lack.” It sounds different from: “I shall not want” or “I shall not be in want.”  “Nothing I lack” means I have everything I need. Do I? Even as I age and feel lacking in many joints, every sag of skin, every short-term memory lapse: what did I have for breakfast today? But with God I lack nothing.

This 23rd psalm hums along, and all of a sudden your mind is jarred. You expect: “You lead me in green pastures” And you hear: “You lead me in lush meadows.” The words mean the same and yet have different tonality, sensuality. Lush!

“You spread a table before me in the face of my (fill in the blank)—enemies, we all say. But we hear: “my greatest fears.”  What is potentiated by these new words? Are your fears like enemies? Do they not make you skulk, cringe, cower and hide? Are they at war with your aspirations? Do they help you sin against goodness? Is this translation as accurate as the idea of having real enfleshed enemies out to get you?

And “I will dwell in the house of (fill in the blank)…the Lord, we shout?  We hear instead: “the Holy.” Lord implies ruler; Holy suggests a quality of Being, a Presence within and without. This Holy Presence  “drenches” our heads with the oil of healing. “Drench” is more literal and stronger than “anoints.”

What do these new words potentiate in you? Maybe contempt or distaste? For me, it’s the knowledge that great words I love do not die when they are altered, but they do acquire a different flavor; they inspire me to think—again and again. As the poet says, these newly spoken and heard words live.

What am I saying? What am I thinking? What am I meaning? What words do I use?

Lastly, the image of the shepherd is softened by these new words. Real shepherds are rough and tumble, not so gentle with sheep. The divine shepherd accompanies yet neither drives not coddles. This shepherd is just be a little more, well, divine.

2016.05.01 Psalm 23—Song of Presence

There is something eternal about Psalm 23. Not only is it traditional and the choice for young children to memorize, but it is used most always at funerals or at bedsides—times of dire need, times when the temptation to despair is close at hand.

The psalm is apolitical. Of all the omni- ideas about the nature of God, this song offers only one: omnipresence. There is no circumstance in and around which God is not fully present—as simple comfort. Comfort is not impotent. It imparts love, raises up the spirit. My son John recalls a time when his spirit was beaten by serious illness and the psalm was prayer over him. He describes an inner sense of decisiveness: he wanted to live not die.

Psalm 23 trusts this kind of unbearably unbelievable, insanely bold, irrational assurance, reinforcing it with graphic biblical and sacramental practices, familiar to religious communities, both then and now.

I don’t know any practicing shepherds, but I understand pastoral spirituality as the gift of empathy and accompaniment, even more than guidance. I cringe when I hear clergy speaking about their congregations as “flock.” This does not bespeak mutual ministry. I do, however, know the experiences of lush meadows and calm waters, wise leadership, the shadow of death, and sacramental grace.

The psalms are part of the Hebrew Scriptures. They are prayers arising from common human experience. In addition to providing a bridge between Judaism and Christianity, most psalms transcend religious particularities. They are songs arising from deep within the human breast, which is why they are a liturgical staple, chanted in worship.

Some years ago, I heard Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen To Good People, speak about this psalm. He emphasized the grammatical shift in the psalm/prayer. It occurs just as the pray-er enters the “valley of the shadow of death.” The pronouns shift from "he" to "thou" from God's serving the supplicant in soothing ways to God's becoming suddenly close and familiar through the use of the second person singular familiar address: you or thou.

Kushner’s son suffered from progeria—accelerated aging, even as a child. Not only is it fatal but it is painfully disfiguring and pathologically counter-cultural. With such a diagnosis, one needs a solid theology of Presence. Kushner wrote about his decision to, well, disempower God—a wise and earthed theology. Most of us maintain a very controlling, intervening idea of God, which escalates  when we are in trouble. We want God to make it all better, to intervene in miraculous ways. This seldom happens. What consistently does happen, however, is what the 23rd psalm suggests with its grammatical shift: increased intimacy.

In newer English translations, we lost this awakening sense of divine movement by changing all the pronouns from “he” to “you” immediately after the first couplet. Further, we eliminated all thee/thou/thy language. In most cases I’d favor that, but here the old translation and the old pronoun forms assist the theology: Thou art with me. Lovely, no? It makes me cry.

The Lord is my shepherd;
   I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
   he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul;
   he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his Name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
   for thou art with me;
   thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
   thou anoinest my head with oil;
   my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
  and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

2015.11.08 Tender Scene Remembered

There is no birthday or anniversary of Dad's death right now, but this poem emerged. I suppose I have not quite moved off the mood of death remembrances: Halloween/All Saints/All Souls—aka The Dark Triduum. And I suppose too that this arose out of spending the day yesterday as facilitator of a retreat day focused on grief. I offered a bit of education and some suggestions and then people dispersed to be in silence and solitude. At the end of the day we gathered as a group. I invited people to share anything they wished. The mood wasn't grim or gloomy,  just vulnerable, hushed. My heart was swollen—not inflamed or painful, simply enlarged as we sat together under the valley of the shadow of death, not overshadowed.


Tender Scene
    by the Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman

I knew my father was dead.
The 6 a.m. call told me so, but
surely he wasn’t dead. Like a detective
I needed a body. Some crime had been
committed, a crime against my heart. All
crimes need proof, don’t they?

I rushed to the scene and saw Mom
making Dad’s bed, neatening, purging the
death-bed of death. This bed where my father
had lain dying for a week, groan by
groan, wrestling his demons, like Jacob, to the pillow—six days exactly—
and on the seventh he rested from all the work he had done.

Dying with purpose is no easy work.
What was Dad creating? A life better than one with no esophagus?
From what did he rest on this cold Sunday in January, 1983?  

There remained
not a shred of evidence of his presence—not even the bedpan, I looked.
Where’s Daddy? The funeral director took him, said Mom.

Cry thief.

I turned and saw proof: Dad, cradled in the arms of Mr. Ahern,
the burly undertaker, his limp body draped across Mr. Ahern’s upper body. 
Dad’s bare legs dangled over the undertaker’s right arm; one of his arms hung loose,
the other tucked neatly against his bearer’s chest.
Dad’s head did not hang loose. Mr. Ahern made sure of that— as you would
carrying a young child off to bed—sound asleep after swearing
he could stay wide awake for “just this one more show”—dead weight.

Or a Pieta.

I’d never seen my father’s body so unclothed—
not quite naked but bare enough.
Doesn’t death deserve clothed dignity just like life?

How in the world did those spindly legs play golf? 
Honestly, you think the damnedest things sometimes. 

My Daddy, Dad, father chose death on the seventh day
in the barely-risen morning. I saw him leave
 on Mr. Ahern’s arm—soon to be ash and bone chips.

I was grateful for the raw viewing, yet . . .what?
I rummaged through Dad’s drawers, found an old golf sweater,
took it, scowled at my mother,
left.

I wore the sweater on and off for
two years—caught the scent of Dad’s soul.
                                                   

2014.05.11 Divine Mothering, Psalm 23

In honor of Mother’s Day and the mothering nature of Godde’s spirit—tender and bold—in all things, I share this beautiful prayer psalm written by Bobby McFerrin, vocalist and poet, born 1950.  By mothering I mean that capacity given to all humanity to hold close, to nurture, to guide and guard, empower, and to feed.

Julian of Norwich, mystic and saint, wrote of Jesus Christ thus: “Jesus, our beloved mother, who feeds us with his most precious body and blood. . .”


McFerrin wrote this version of the psalm and dedicated it to his own mother.  You can hear him chant it on YouTube (google his name of course:)—or click:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9fzWq-d8jU    I promise you it will make you weep.


The 23rd Psalm
By Bobby McFerrin

The Lord is my Shepard, I have all I need,
She makes me lie down in green meadows,
Beside the still waters, She will lead.

She restores my soul, She rights my wrongs,
She leads me in a path of good things,
And fills my heart with songs.

Even though I walk, through a dark & dreary land,
There is nothing that can shake me,
She has said She won't forsake me,
I'm in her hand.

She sets a table before me, in the presence of my foes,
She anoints my head with oil,
And my cup overflows.

Surely, surely goodness & kindness will follow me,
All the days of my life,
And I will live in her house,
Forever, forever & ever.

Glory be to our Mother, & Daughter,
And to the Holy of Holies,
As it was in the beginning, is now & ever shall be,
World, without end. Amen.