Opoho Presbyterian Church

Psalm writing at Opoho

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Between 2017 and 2020, a small group of us met at Opoho Presbyterian Church every two or three months to encourage each other with our psalm writing. We liked to begin by eating our evening meal of takeaways together before sharing a psalm (or two) that we’d written since we last met. We read the psalms aloud and received encouragement and useful feedback from the group. It was surprisingly rich and worthwhile.

As one psalm writer said, “It makes you view the world differently through a psalm-like gaze”. One of us challenged herself to write a psalm a week during Lent while another sometimes writes psalms in response to issues in their workplace. Our psalms are very diverse as the following titles show: Psalm of the Cat, In Anticipation of Fish and Chips, On Being Presbyterian, and A 21st Century Psalm of Darkness.

Our psalm writing grew out of our bible study. A group of us at Opoho Church went through a 6½ year quest to read the Bible one book a month from Genesis to Revelation. Early in 2017 we discussed the book of Psalms and we thought it might be interesting to look at writing responses to particular Biblical psalms or writing our own.

We’ve often been asked “What is a psalm and how are they different to poems?” A psalm is a sacred song or hymn, in particular those in the Biblical book of Psalms. Psalms are about our relationships with God and a person or people’s faith understandings within our Judeo-Christian context. They are personal expressions of faith (although they can be used corporately) and, like songs, they use poetic devices as opposed to being, for example, a sermon in prose. One of us found that when she writes a psalm she is in a different head space to when she writes poetry.

Our psalms are expressions of our understandings of God, faith and life. We write  in our own language and they are very much located in this time and place we find ourselves in. Psalm writing is creative and can be surprisingly fun ~ and who knows, they might just speak to some one else too.

As well as being inspired by the Hebrew psalmists, being antipodeans it probably isn’t surprising that we are also indebted to two Kiwis and an Australian: Joy Cowley and her books of psalms (such as Psalms for Down-Under and Aotearoa Psalms), Silvia Purdie’s reinterpretations of the biblical psalms (see conversations.net.nz) and Jim Cotter’s Psalms for a Pilgrim People.

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Available for download are a collection of psalms from the first two years, and psalms and other writings from around the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.