My daughter bought the most lovely book for babies—it is called The 23rd Psalm: A Color Primer written by Danielle Hitchen and illustrated by Jessica Blanchard.
My last strong memory of the 23rd Psalm was the night my father lay dying . As I held tightly to his hand I began to recite “The Lord is my Shepherd..,” stumbling over some of the lines. “Say it again,” I heard his stern Sunday School teacher voice in my head ,and I said it again, this time remembering the words I had known by heart from earliest childhood.
This morning as I cradle my sleepy granddaughter and read "He leads me beside still waters,” I think about how the same words that ushered my aged father onto his journey into the next world are here to lead this child through the hills and valleys and light and shadows of this one. I want her to know she will be guided.
The words of the 23rd Psalm ring true, no matter what our faith tradition. They are not promises of ease and success. They do not deny the inevitability of suffering. But they do promise that whatever we must face in this life, we will not face it alone.
Words have power to sustain us. Whenever I am in an existential crisis, suffering from a smothering anxiety or feeling deep despair, I seek solace in words. I look for an answer in books. Often I have been upheld by the wise words of Eckhert Tolle’s The Power of Now or Bhuddist nun Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart. Sometimes I copy whole paragraphs of their words in my notebook, feeling comforted as the letters form under my pen. Here is wisdom; here is a way through.
But deepest in my psyche are the words I always knew. In my mother’s last years, it was the words of the old Power and Praise hymnal that comforted her. Sometimes I used to play the piano at the nursing home where she was, and ladies who long ago were girls from the North Carolina mill town who grew up in the local Baptist and Methodist churches would gather around, putting on reading glasses to see the tiny print in the hymnal.. “I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses..” They sang and sang, even those who like my mother were struggling with dementia, and they didn’t really need to see the words.
Even for me now , as I read this book to my granddaughter I am aware that I am replacing modern English with words like “leadeth” and “restoreth. “ The cadence of the King James Bible is what is deepest in my memory.
One of my most poignant memories about the power of words comes from an experience teaching ESL to an immigrant community several years ago. I had a student from Syria. She was a middle aged woman struggling with English, with navigating the city bus system and shopping for groceries; everything was hard and she was often distressed. One week we had a project where students practiced English by introducing to the rest of the class something from their culture; a student from China made dumplings for us; a young man from Brazil taught us how to kick a soccer ball... When this student’s day came, she walked to front of the classroom carrying the Koran in a cloth. She stood in front of us, removed her shoes, put on her glasses, carefully opened the Koran and began to read to us in Arabic. Before my eyes, she transformed. Gone was the struggling hesitant student. Here instead was a strong beautiful woman speaking with confidence words as beloved to her as the 23rd Psalm is to me.
That experience changed me as teacher. I still encourage expression in English in every way I can. But I never, ever want students to lose sight of the value and beauty and power of the language that nurtured them. I don’t want any of us to lose sight of the words that nurtured us. And I want our future generations to have words to live by.
So parents.. uncles.. aunts.. cousins.. friends.. Read to the children. Sing to them. Recite them poems. Tell them stories. Let good words be written on their hearts.
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