Publisher's Synopsis
New Creation Psalms are an extended meditation in verse. Like the original Psalms, its rhythms and imagery are inspired by contemporary worship, and may be adapted to the same. But their primary inspiration is the beauty and wonder of creation, specifically the California coast, the Sierras, and the lakes and woods of my native northern Michigan: landscapes, sacred dreamscapes which opened my eyes to the light within created things and my ears to the prayer and praise which they utter.The entire cosmos is permeated by liturgies of creation and hymns of praise. The whole of realityis meant to be one vast Prayer. Far from a plea sent towards a different God, prayer is the meansby which Creator and Creature are irrevocably entwined, one with the other, in mutual sympathy. Tom CheethamThrough all of this I have come to the belief that the calling of the poet and psalmist, in fact the chief vocation of man, is to give human voice to that prayer. To be the eyes, ears, and heart of the Creator in the midst of creation.To offer the things of earth for redemption, to lift each moment and longing to heaven, to make intercession for each man and creature, that all might find place and none be forgottenin the roll of the names and the courts of the Kingdom. Like the biblical Psalms, these verses also speak to the despoilation of the earth, the state of human society ("the wickedness which is done under the sun"), the cry of the heart for justice, for deliverance, and the longing for light and hope where there sometimes doesn't seem to be any. Though the answer may be implicit in the question: this very cry and longing are a witness to a stirring of the Spirit in our time, a sign that we have not been abandoned. A rumble of faith, an inner sensing that the death throes of the world around us are in fact the birth-pangs of a new creation within us. If we could see and embrace it.These meditations have helped me to do so. May they help you as well.
