If we listen closely to the Psalms, what we picture when we picture redemption becomes wider and deeper—and stranger. Redemption looks like rivers, mountains, trees, gates, paths, storms, and the list goes on. Redemption happens through verbs like cutting, carving, flooding, releasing, wandering, losing, and finding.

For this episode of the Members Podcast, I’ve chosen four psalm renditions that approach redemption from different angles. You’ll hear them back to back, each offering a different picture of what it means for God to set things right.

The images are a river of justice, God’s high mountain, the gates that end the exile, and the lathe of love.

Psalm 10 gives us the first image: a river of justice. The psalmist looks out at a world where the wicked prosper and the vulnerable suffer, where those who prey upon the weak seem to act without consequence. And he pleads with God:

“Do not levee the river of justice,
But let your reckoning run.
Make your ruin rain and
Tumble them in the flood.”

The image is of a river held back by a levee, its waters gathering until they finally break through. God’s justice is pictured as a flood that sweeps away oppression. The speaker cries out, “Haven’t you seen all this? Haven’t you heard our cries and watched the ones you swore to shelter snatched away? We have no help but you. We were stalked through all of yesterday’s years, hoping in you.”

There is a desperation here that resonates with anyone who has lived through a time when hope, by every visible measure, seems unreasonable. The bad guys are going to win. The things that should never happen now seem inevitable. And yet, from somewhere beyond hope, a prayer still rises: that God would release the river of his justice, show up, and make things right again.

Psalm 15 takes us to God’s holy mountain. Throughout the Bible, mountains are places where heaven and earth meet. The story begins in Eden, a garden pictured as a mountain, with rivers flowing out to water the world. God meets his people on mountains throughout the biblical story: Sinai, Zion, the mountain of transfiguration. And at the end of Revelation, John is carried to a great, high mountain to behold the New Jerusalem, a restored Eden where God dwells with humanity, with the river of life flowing from his throne.

Psalm 15 asks:

“Lord, who can journey with you?
Who can find their home
On your holy mountain?”

And the answer is a portrait of a life marked by integrity, generosity, and love. The one who belongs there is someone who can “suffer love with great hearts and be glad of it,” someone who gives themselves away but cannot be bought, who promises more than there is to give, and gives more than it takes to live. Redemption here isn’t simply rescue from danger or deliverance from judgment. It’s becoming the kind of person whose life is a journey into the presence of God, increasingly bearing his likeness.

Psalm 24 gives us the third image: the gates that end the exile. The first gates we encounter in the biblical story are shut. The biblical story begins with humanity driven out of the garden, away from the presence of God. The way back is barred, guarded by cherubim. From that moment onward, the story of redemption is also a story of homecoming, of finding a way back into the place we were made to inhabit.

And Psalm 24 imagines the end of that long exile:

“Lift up every last lost gate.
Open every angel-hemmed door.
The king of glory is coming in,
The resurrected world in step behind him.”

I love that image. The gates are thrown open to welcome an entire resurrected world following behind the king. Psalm 24 looks forward to the end of exile—but, like Psalm 15, it's also interested in the people who wait for redemption: who they must become, and what the waiting might make of them.

Which brings us to the final image.

Psalm 36 gives us an image of redemption as “the lathe of love.” The psalm begins with a picture of wickedness as a mind that runs endlessly through its own destructive patterns.

“The wicked man’s mind runs glad
With evil thoughts, and he can’t sleep.
His heart tramps from wrong to wrong
In a dim parade, full of all the wrong fears.”

But against this restless, self-enclosed motion, the psalm places the immeasurable steadfast love of God—a love wider than the sky, higher than the clouds, reaching beyond the farthest stars.

And the rendition ends with a prayer:

“God, lift me up but lay low
And unlace every lie left.
Keep me in the slow lathe of your love.
Make my soul’s bones hone and spin.”

A lathe turns a piece of wood against a cutting tool, gradually shaping it into something new. It’s a striking picture of redemption as the slow work of being remade. Only the blade in this lathe is God’s love, which slowly removes what doesn’t belong and reshapes us in the ways we need to change.

Here are the four renditions in their entirety from the Darkling Psalter along with a pdf available below for paid subscribers.

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Rendition of Psalm 26

God, mark me. Try me.
I have wagered with you and wavered.
Prove me against the whetted edge 
Of your unfailing love. 

I have cast my lot with yours,
Yet kept the company of villains
When they were the only friends I knew.
I have laughed loud and late with them
When their razor words were the only jokes around. 
I have washed my hands in innocence,
But it never seemed enough.
I circled your altar seven times,
Waiting to see more than stone,
Watching for a fire I couldn’t explain.

I don’t know how I made it out, except
I held a hope time could not beat level.
There was always a mission bell, 
A beacon on my bow, a faith sheer off,
A homing flame, a flare, a beam
For my waning way.
I have wanted to be with you
Out of the world wind,
To live where you live.
I have wanted someone to say:
Come home, come back,
All is forgiven.

So don’t leave me here like a spit pip.
Show me your consolations—
One for every year that went wrong.
Stand me in your grace on level ground. 
Touch the holy coal to my lips.
And let me feel the firekiss.
When the starlong stride of your light arrives,
I will promise myself to it
Until the promise takes.
Lift my life toward the sunless city.
Show me the fire, my pillaring God.
Let me feel the warmth on my face.

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

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More Newsletters from Andy

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.

Rendition

The earth and all its fullness is the Lord’s:
The landed pillars of the deep,
The thrumming, captured seas,
The rivers rising from the holy ground—
Are all still his.

Who can find a home on your mountain?
Who can stand inside your holy place
With head high and a whole heart?
The one who held the coal and felt the firekiss;
Who greets God in every lesser love;
Who hoped her way through long years,
Black and bird-boned as the limbs of winter.
Whose laugh broke in rich beams,
Loud and wild as it would.

Lift up every last lost gate.
Open every angel-hemmed door.
The king of glory is coming in,
The resurrected world in step behind him.

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

Yes! Count me in.

The Darkling Psalter is a reader-supported publication. To support the work and gain access to a growing library of member-only content, become a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

More Newsletters from Andy

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

Redemption is written into plots and characters, into refrains and structures, into themes and settings. And it is written into the images. Bread and wine, shepherd and sheep, fish and fishermen, fire and water, height and depth. The familiar diagram of a cross bridging a chasm is one true image, but taken alone it becomes reductionistic. Scripture, on the other hand, keeps turning the jewel, revealing new facets, taking us to greater depths.

The Darkling Psalter follows that pattern. The renditions keep asking, what it looks like when God comes to save? Sometimes salvation falls from the sky. Sometimes it erupts from the ground. Sometimes it’s something we taste, something we eat or drink. Sometimes it’s a place we finally find.

Psalm 3 gives us the image of redemption as a bird of prey. The psalm starts with the speaker hemmed in, menaced by snapping teeth and ravening fears. Then, unexpectedly, rescue arrives not as gentle uplift but as a strike from above. The speaker asks God to “Fall on every trouble like a falcon tipped from holy heights.” God is the greater predator, the one danger fears. And out of that fierce descent, a strange peace follows. The psalm says: “The danger drew close around me, but I was still safe.” Redemption here is not the absence of threat but the presence of something swifter and stronger in the sky.

And in Psalm 18, that same saving God doesn’t only fall from above, he erupts from below. The speaker cries out almost reflexively with prayers like gasps, like “a hand upraised from the water, and something catches.” But what wakes when the prayer is answered is again a greater violence—a fire-mount. God’s redemption in the rendition of Psalm 18 is volcanic, evoking Mt. Sinai, the mountain crowned with light and smoke, that the Israelites could not come near and live. His love “lashes lava lines” and “every naked thought crisps in the lightning light.” Psalm 18 stands as a testament to the fact that sometimes, when we ask for redemption, we get more than we bargained for. The speaker says, “I regretted my pleas for help. I wished he hadn’t come.” And yet, in the same breath, “the strange light flashed around me, snatched me up and I was saved.” Psalm 18 asks the paradoxical question: “Lord, how can you be so gentle and so pyroclastic?”

Then the rendition of Psalm 34 brings us to a quieter image, like a “soft dawn in the high sky.” The image now is startlingly ordinary: God as someone who can be tasted and tested. He is “the feast the hungry lack, the wine that draws them back.” Not a chasm crossed or a mountain exploded, but food, shelter, home. As the last line has it: God shelters “all who come to him as their last, lost, happy home.”

And finally, Psalm 46 gives us the image of the fortress. “I looked a fool, but my shelter stood. / Father, sweep me into your high hold / And seal the doors.” The world outside may be coming apart—“the walls of the world give way,” mountains are upended, waves climb as high as the sky—but inside the fortress, “it can’t claim us. It takes no share of us.” The walls hold. So God’s redemption becomes a place that is strong enough that you can: “Be still. Be small. Go quiet. / Love and sing and wonder— / Unharmed and unarmed.”

There is also a pdf available below for paid subscribers.

Read more

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.

Rendition

Lord, I am on the run.
This has all gone farther 
Than I could have imagined.
I’m in the wind. 
I have seen what hunts my trail
And crouches at my door
And it scares me.
If my enemies have their way,
They’ll swallow me whole.

I am not innocent.
I have repaid evil for good.
I have brooded thoughts
That hatched like vipers.
I have heard the song of revenge
And have added my own voice.
If my enemies are right and I am wrong,
Lay me low, overthrow me. 

I feel your anger churn against me
And my pursuers alike,
But do not let me fall into their hands.
You are the only just judge.
You will make no mistake,
And nothing will take you by surprise.
You have appointed a day 
To gather us to yourself.
On that day, remember 
When I walked with you.
Bring evil to an end,
But make every tender shoot 
Of goodness burst to blossom.
Make our weary, waning days
Into a refiner’s fire,
Just as silver meets itself at last
Before the dross is lifted.

You know how to save the righteous,
And you know how to lay low the wicked.
Your weapons are ready to hand;
You won’t let evil go unchecked, unmarked.
You’ll whistle its own works 
Back to hound it down. 

When you are lifted up,
Where will the judgment fall?
When you have the final word,
What will you say? 

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

Yes! Count me in.

The Darkling Psalter is a reader-supported publication. To support the work and gain access to a growing library of member-only content, become a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

More Newsletters from Andy

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

We usually think of transformation as becoming something new, but in the case of a crucible, the fire doesn’t make the silver something else. It reveals what it always was by removing what it never should have been.

Psalm 30 is a lament from the midst of the crucible of change. “When I prospered, I promised myself / That I would always prosper,” the speaker says. “I grew bright on limelight.” But what seemed solid was not: “The faith I thought was anvils / Was only a sly season / That let half truths gather.” Then the refining blow comes: “Your hammer fell and the brittle, bright / Charade shattered.”

Psalm 38 goes further. Here the psalmist has been brought low: “Your hand pressed me into the ground. / You heaved my heart whole over.” He says, “My wrongs have doubled back on me, and I can’t bear them.” His heart is “scoured bright as brass— / Abraded, burnished, blazing hot.” Slowly, the pain gives way to prayer: “Do not cast me off, but stay with me / Even now, rush to help me. / Level out a rollicking, bracing, lavisher love. / My chevalier in stride, have your way!”

By the time we reach Psalm 40, the transformation has done its work. The speaker has waited until his strength has given out, and what remains is a kind of surrender: “My hands are empty. / My plans are gone. / My clever days are over.” He is ready now for something new to be written: “Pierce me straight through / And scrawl your lines on / The paper walls of my living heart.” The rendition ends with the line: “Now, I know the waiting is the rescue.”

There is also a pdf available below for paid subscribers.

Read more

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.

Rendition

Lord, you made a king from clay,
And set a crown upon his head.
Before a need was on his lips,
You knew it. He asked for life, 
And you lengthened his days.
You breached the levee of your love
And your ways flooded through him.
He became a hollow hand, 
raised and waiting, and you filled it.
He became a mirror,
And you tipped him toward your light.
Blessing ran over his palms like water;
He scooped it up and drank.

But your hand will let the wicked reach
Only so far before you catch them out.
They seem strong as stone,
But they’re stubble
That blackens and blows away
When your wrath erupts around them.
Their mighty plans have brittle seams.
They storm forward beneath bright banners,
Never to return. Their hands hold
The engines of power.
They launch volleys
That black out the sun,
But their arrows bend back
To land around their own feet.

Lord, you lift up those 
Who raise their hands in need to you,
And humble those who stretch 
Their strength to strike and rend.
In the end, every mouth will open in praise
Or shut in awe and fear
When your justice comes
And the day draws near.

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

Yes! Count me in.

The Darkling Psalter is a reader-supported publication. To support the work and gain access to a growing library of member-only content, become a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

More Newsletters from Andy

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

One of the things I’ve heard most often from members is that you’d like more ways to keep and return to these psalm renditions—especially well-designed PDFs that can live somewhere other than your inbox.

So I’ve been working on something new.

The Pilgrim’s Way is the first in what I hope will become a series of small Darkling Psalter chapbooks: thematic collections designed to be read slowly, saved, printed, and returned to.

This first collection gathers ten psalm renditions around one of the Psalms’ oldest images for the life of faith: the way. These are psalms about wandering and being led, losing the path and finding it again, walking through danger, waiting, taking refuge, and coming home.

The Pilgrim’s Way includes Psalms 1, 5, 16, 17, 23, 25, 26, 32, 37, and 43.

Paid members can download the complete chapbook below.

Read more

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Rendition of Psalm 20

May the Lord hear you
And answer with strong wings
Beating on gale winds.
May your help come 
Even before the need is raised—
Swift as hunting hawks, fleet as falcons .
May he send you every help you ask,
Bigger than heart hoped, dream guessed, 
Or mind ever tried.

Then we will watch you and sing
Glad, great-hearted songs.
Then we will see that our God
Knows how to save.
We’ll know the silent sky
Can speak, and holy heaven 
Ring like struck bells.
Some laugh at our long odds
And hope in what their hands can touch,
But we brim and run over
Even when we raise
Empty hands the highest.

Lord, we rise and wait at hopefall
For the sound of hushed wings.
Hear us.

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

Yes! Count me in.

The Darkling Psalter is a reader-supported publication. To support the work and gain access to a growing library of member-only content, become a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

More Newsletters from Andy

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

Psalm 23 begins on a path we would not have chosen for ourselves. God does not always lead us around the valley, but through it. Psalm 38 takes us into the wreckage of our own wandering, walking the long lanes of grief through consequences of choices—our own and others’.

Psalm 1 returns us to the question of the way itself: how do we learn to walk differently? And Psalm 40 ends with God drawing us out of the pit, setting our feet on solid ground, and establishing our steps.

Together, these four psalms trace a difficult walk with God: being led, losing the way, learning it again, and finding our feet set firm.

Read more

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.

Rendition of Psalm 14

Every fool knows God is gone,
So they give themselves to things
They can’t come back from; 
Feed themselves on limelight; 
Live by the hope of moving on.
Like everyone who has sold themselves,
They insist it was worth it.

The Lord looks down to see
If anyone has yet let
Goodness creep up on them, 
Or let the hard hands of grief
Shake and wake them, 
But he sees knurled knuckle hearts,
Hearts that snarl, hearts far gone.
Not even one is ready to do good.

They tell themselves they’ve tallied God—
Totted up his promises, but none solved, 
None stacked against his wrongs; 
All yielded impossible sums 
Only a fool would count on. 

None call upon the Lord. 
Rather they eat God’s people
As one devours an oyster.
They would pry open our inner parts 
And swallow us down with sauces.
They laugh at jokes that aren’t there,
And hollow themselves like bird bones. 
At night, they grind panicseed 
Between dull teeth and wake gasping,
Thinking they have heard a voice. 

But God is a falcon. God has claws on.
His silence is a hunting hawk.
His wing shadow passes over 
The weak, marks them.
His dread dives all down wilder.
His love is with them, prowling wider.

Oh, that salvation would find us,
Fall on us, hem us in,
Scatter back this rabble,
And make us glad again.

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

Yes! Count me in.

The Darkling Psalter is a reader-supported publication. To support the work and gain access to a growing library of member-only content, become a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

More Newsletters from Andy

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

Before we get into this episode of the Members Podcast, I want to ask a question. Since starting the second podcast, we’ve done a series on spiritual formation through the lens of the Darkling Psalter; we have paired psalms, one dark, one light, and reflected on the resonances between the two; we have done author’s notes as I go in depth on the meaning of one of the renditions; and we’ve grouped a handful of psalms thematically and listened to them back-to-back.

My question for you is: What have you found helpful, and what would you like more of? One of these categories or something new? I want this podcast to be useful for people who want to go deeper with the Darkling Psalter, and I’m hoping to get some feedback on what would be best for that.

Let me know what you’ve enjoyed the most:

If you have an idea for something that’s not on there, leave it in the comments.

Now on to this week’s episode.

Psalm 19 Walkthrough

Psalm 19 begins with one of the most familiar images in the Psalms: the heavens declaring the glory of God. But what does it actually mean for creation to speak without words?

This episode of the Members Podcast takes a closer look at Psalm 19, with a nerdy detour into the Milky Way, light-years, and what’s really happening when you look up at the night sky.

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The episode begins with Psalms 42 and 43, which almost merge into a single psalm. They share the same refrain and seem to continue the same prayer: a thirsty, restless soul longing for God, asking why he seems so far away, and asking for his help.

Then, in Psalm 46, the instability spreads outward until the whole world seems to be coming apart—mountains falling, waters roaring, nations raging.

Psalm 62 arrives somewhere quieter. The psalmist has learned to wait. Not because the instability has disappeared, but because it has found something that doesn’t move.

So these four psalms move from restlessness and longing, through upheaval, and finally into stillness—from a soul searching for its refuge to a soul learning to rest there.

Read more

For this episode of the Members Podcast, I’m trying something a little different. Instead of reading a new psalm, I’m taking you behind the scenes of my rendition of Psalm 1 and throwing in some commentary to boot.

In the episode, I talk about the recurrent image of the tree of life as it appears in Genesis, the gospels, Revelation, and Psalm 1; why the …

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Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.

Rendition of Psalm 46

When trouble days came,
I rooted and waited for God.
Though the walls of the world give way,
And the mountains are upended,
And the foaming waves climb 
As high as the sky; I will stay settled here. 
I looked a fool, but my shelter stood.

Father, sweep me into your high hold
And seal the doors. River me in
And make me glad again. 
Though all the madness that ever was
Arrayed itself around your walls,
It can’t claim us. It takes no share of us.
No rage, nor waves can rise higher than God. 

He keeps an unimaginable summer
That evil can’t blacken or break.
He makes wars cease.
He breaks bows and splinters spears,
Sears chariots, seeds silence,
Raises his words above the din, 
And sets the world right again.

So be still. Be small. Go quiet.
Love and sing and wonder—
Unharmed and unarmed. 
Rest. Watch. 
He is God. 
He doesn’t need you to lift him up;
He is under your feet. He carries you. 

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

Yes! Count me in.

The Darkling Psalter is a reader-supported publication. To support the work and gain access to a growing library of member-only content, become a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

More Newsletters from Andy

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

I’m trying something a bit different for this episode of the Members Podcast. Instead of reading a new psalm, I walk through my rendition of Psalm 18 and explain the poetic and theological choices behind it. It’s part commentary on Psalm 18 and part casual author’s notes.

Read more

I wanted to pass along a daily literary resource in newsletter form: Diary of an Old Soul.

Diary of an Old Soul

Walk through a year with George MacDonald. Diary of an Old Soul is George MacDonald's remarkable cycle of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year. Receive each poem on the day for which MacDonald wrote it.

By Andy Patton

George MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul is a collection of 366 devotional poems—one for every day of the year—from a Christian poet who influenced people like Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton in countless ways.

If you’d like to receive these poems in your inbox day by day, there is Substack for that now:

• What it is: A single short poem delivered each morning, written by George MacDonald for that specific day of the year.

• Why read it: It offers a brief, grounding moment of reflection and prayer to start or end your day.

As always, thank you for reading and being a part of The Darkling Psalter.

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Youtube.

Rendition

I forget how to begin, Lord.
Wait for me. It’ll take a minute
To find my way from here
To somewhere else.

I’ve been digging ditches all summer, 
Sweating through my graveclothes.
I can feel the beat, beat,
Beat of things going faster—my pulse, 
My pitted prayers, the waltzing clock.
I’ve been patting my pockets since June,
And I keep coming up short.
I thought I was only busy,
But I watched these holes getting deeper, 
And realized: one is as good as another.

All day a question runs in my head:
Will you meet me more than halfway,
Or will you drag me off with the wicked? 
I can find their every shortfall in myself. 
I have taken my sin in sips,
While I waited for time to eat away at my resolve.
I have settled for less
And insisted it was worth it.
I have pressed my hands to the wall
In the space between two trains
And hoped my fleeting pleas would pass for prayer.

You hold yourself silent,
But I know you are there.
You show yourself and dance away,
You made your rumor run 
Under the wind, wild as wolves, 
Catching, coy, quicksilver—
Purple in fingers picking blackberries,
Gasping in the azaleas,
Cascading in summer hollyhocks 
Grown head-high and higher. You are there 
In the throaty chuckle of ravens brooding 
Like a gang of black toads in the oak trees.
You are there when the grace gathers
Around the table at dinner,
In the hallowed halls of the real world,
Ready to be passed again from hand to hand
In bits of bread and cups of wine.

Lord, help me. Hear me.
Gird yourself and guard me.
Show up, my God, you plodder! 
I cannot give much more than this.
If you are not my help,
I have none. Shepherd, 
Carry me. 

Dive deeper into the Darkling Psalter with the Member Podcast.

Members Podcast

If you would like to move this project one step closer to publication, sign up on this form to request the Darkling Psalter in print.

Yes! Count me in.

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Today we’re returning to our series of paired psalms—listening to two together, one leading into the other. This time, Psalm 43 and Psalm 16.

I have given the rendition of Psalm 43 the very long title “It Wasn’t Away from My Wreck That I Found You, but in the Middle of It.” because i felt that line captured the heart of what is happening in the psalm. The psalm comes from a place of confusion, doubt, wrestling, and desperation. It opens with a cascade of hard questions: If you are my refuge, why do I go about mourning? If you are my safety, why am I always in flight? The poet is hounded and hackled, watching fear run like a song through their head — it says: Faith is a fool’s game; faith is razor-bladed.

But there is a shift in the middle. It isn’t that everything suddenly goes right but the lost-ness pivots somehow towards hope through the medium of prayer. It ends with the line: O my soul, why would you come this farTo fall now? Hold your hope aloft. None of this is what it seems.”

On the other hand, the posture of Psalm 16 is that of someone finding refuge inside the shelter of God’s care. It says: You are my God; what other home do I have but where you are? It describes a return of what was lost. In the words of hte rendition: “My old loves all return like birds to eat from my hands.” There is the astonishing discovery of contentment. The lines of my life lead here… I didn’t know joy could run this full.

Read together, these psalms trace a single journey. The rendition of Psalm 43 teaches us how to hold on to hope before we can see it. Psalm 16 remembers what that hope eventually finds.

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Here is Liturgical Letters.

Each morning, the new Substack will send out a short daily office: a historic collect, a psalm, a brief Scripture reading, and a closing prayer. The whole thing takes about five minutes to read. The idea was to give people a way to start every day with a little bit of prayer and scripture in a way that was still small enough to become a habit.

If a short, consistent pattern of Scripture and prayer would be helpful to you, you can sign up here.

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton

Here is today’s office so you can see what it’s like:

A New Teaching with Authority

Ordinary Time • Week 9

“They were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, ‘What is this? A new teaching? For with authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him!’”

—Mark 1:27

Collect

Merciful Father, whose Son stretched out his hand to cleanse the leper and restore the outcast: Grant that we, having received your mercy, may show compassion without fear, welcome those who are forgotten, and faithfully bear witness to the healing power of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Psalm 111

World English Bible (WEB)

1 Praise the Lord!

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart,

in the council of the upright, and in the congregation.

2 The Lord’s works are great,

pondered by all those who delight in them.

3 His work is honor and majesty.

His righteousness endures forever.

4 He has caused his wonderful works to be remembered.

The Lord is gracious and merciful.

5 He has given food to those who fear him.

He always remembers his covenant.

6 He has shown his people the power of his works,

in giving them the heritage of the nations.

7 The works of his hands are truth and justice.

All his precepts are sure.

8 They are established forever and ever.

They are done in truth and uprightness.

9 He has sent redemption to his people.

He has ordained his covenant forever.

His name is holy and awesome!

10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

All those who do his work have a good understanding.

His praise endures forever!

Mark 1:21–28

World English Bible (WEB)

21 They went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath day he entered into the synagogue and taught.

22 They were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes.

23 Immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out,

24 saying, “Ha! What do we have to do with you, Jesus, you Nazarene? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God!”

25 Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet, and come out of him!”

26 The unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.

27 They were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching? For with authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him!”

28 The report of him went out immediately everywhere into all the region of Galilee and its surrounding area.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ, whose word is full of truth and authority, teach us to hear your voice with humble hearts. Deliver us from every power that opposes your kingdom, establish us in your truth, and make us faithful disciples who gladly obey your commands; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Liturgical Letters

*Liturgical Letters* is a daily prayer letter following the rhythm of the Christian year. Each post includes Scripture, a psalm, a Scripture reading, and historic prayers.

By Andy Patton