With my Whole Heart: Reflections on the heart of the
Psalms
James Jones
SPCK £8.99
(978-0-28106-805-0)
Church Times Bookshop £8.10 (Use
code CT187)
THE Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, has written a book that
comes from the heart - one that has literally been broken and
restored. After his major heart surgery at the Heart and Chest
Hospital in Liverpool, he turned to Coverdale's Psalms in the Book
of Common Prayer as a familiar text to aid his healing. He searched
out references to the word "heart" in Coverdale's version, and has
now produced a book of short reflections - no more than a page and
half - each of which ends with a brief prayer on the verse in
question.
This is an utterly unpretentious book, with just the right tone
for anyone in grief or despair who has neither the focus nor energy
to read or pray for long. It is, in the Bishop's own words, the
"quiet transfusion of faith that inspires the believer and
seeker".
The "heart", in Coverdale's version, is a rich metaphor. Jones
takes us through some 70 psalms, discussing themes such as the
communing heart (4.4), the truthful heart (15.2), the comforted
heart (27.16), the contrite heart (34.18), the heart that is fixed
(57.8), the rejoicing heart (84.2), a heart applied to wisdom
(90.12), a ready heart (108.1), the wounded heart (109.21), the
desolate heart (143.4), and a heart that is meek (149.4).
It is important to know what this book is not. It is certainly
not exegetical, but works as a sort of lectio divina,
taking a word or phrase and applying it to a personal experience of
suffering, pain, doubt, and heartache. So the book has little
regard for whether a psalm might suggest anything more than an
intimate and individual setting in the here and now. And it reads
the psalms only through the English medium.
Coverdale, despite his enviable ability to communicate with
poetic balance of sound and sense, was not constrained by the
original Hebrew; he preferred to translate indirectly from the
Latin. This can create problems for a study on just one word. For
example, the Hebrew word for heart (lëb) adds many other
layers of meaning - spiritual and physical, the mind as well as
emotion, the will as well as intention - and provides a metaphor
not only for the individual person but for the whole (therapeutic)
community.
Furthermore, the word "heart" is found in many psalms other than
those where it is used in Coverdale's English; conversely, some of
Coverdale's psalms that use the word "heart" do not actually have
lëb within them; so a somewhat different overall picture
emerges.
But this book is about catharsis, and was never intended to be
an academic exercise: it is a mirror on to the soul. For those who
want to feel the heartbeat of the psalms purely as personal
prayers, it has an integrity and directness that are hard to
match.
Dr Susan Gillingham is a reader in the Old Testament at
Worcester College, Oxford.