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Today, we will engage a spiritual exercise: Paraphrasing a Psalm. The first time I tried this was in preparation for teaching it to a group meeting for training in experiential prayer.
So, I begin there: experiential prayer. Such prayer is means to help us experience more deeply Christ's Presence and Nuturance. Paraphrasing a Psalm is one of many forms of experiential prayer.
The directions for doing Paraphrasing a Psalm are simple. I will give the directions and give, afterward, a sample of my own practice of it.
1) Open by invoking the Presence of the Holy Spirit.
2) Read a Psalm a few times from one translation of the Scripture.
3) Paraphrase the Psalm in your own words. Generally, a paraphrase is longer and more explanatory than a translation, but it does not have to be.
Okay, here is a sample I did from Psalm 19. I will give the translation, the English Standard Version, then, my paraphrase. To aid in comparison, I will place these in facing columns on the next page.
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