. . . Continued from previous post.

Then the Creator formed the red earth creature*
out of the dust of the ground
and blew into the creature’s nostrils the breath of life,
and the creature became a living being. ~ Gen. 2: 7

Let everything that has breath
praise the Source of all breath and the Giver of all life. ~ Ps. 150: 6

I will bless the Lord at all times;
God’s praise shall ever be in my mouth. ~ Ps. 34:1

The first definition in the Dictionary for the word praise is “the act of expressing approval or admiration; commendation; laudation.” This fits the situation of a person praising another person: a medical staff member praising a doctor’s knowledge, skill, and bedside manner; a pro basketball player praising his high school coach at his induction into the NBA Hall of Fame; a teacher praising a former student who is now an accomplished scientist; a young adult praising her friend for her courage and integrity in the face of an unjust situation at work. But this definition does not fit a human or a faith community giving praise to God. Praising God is not paying a compliment to or expressing admiration for the Divine. Far from it.

The biblical texts indicate that there are many reasons and contexts for people offering praise to God. God’s holiness, majesty, and splendor elicit praise. Recognition that God is Life-Giver, Maker of heaven and earth draw out genuine praise. The experience of being the beneficiary of God’s love, protection, goodness, care, mercy, and help evoke praise. But even these reasons are secondary.

So what distinguishes praise as prayer before God and praise as lateral admiration given to another person? The fundamental, primordial motive force for praise is that God is God. This alone evokes and explains praise. It is this awareness, experience, and conviction that is the most elementary impetus for praising God. All other reasons, contexts, and expressions of praising God are outgrowths of this original, ontological motivation. God alone is worthy of our wholehearted praise. To praise is to value, to know the worth of, to prize. What we give ourselves to shows what we value and worship. It reveals our everyday, functional God unless it draws us nearer to God or is done in some sense for God. When directed toward God, praise indicates that God alone is deserving of and owed our worship (worth-ship).

More personally, the next reason to praise God is awakening to the reality that we live and move and have our being in and because of God. The idea of a self-made man or woman is laughable on scientific, existential-religious, and practical grounds (See Ps. 100:3). I remember well a man coming to me for spiritual direction during a month-long retreat that he was making. Toward the end of our first meeting, he choked up and began to weep as he spoke of the death of his mother and how much he loved and owed to her. After he regained his composure, I asked him when she had died. He replied, “She died in childbirth the day I was born.” The man was in his seventies.

To praise God is to remember the whenceness of our being, the ineffable mystery and Love-Source that made our existence possible. To praise is to re-member where we come from. When I praise God, with words whose reach is grossly insufficient or without words in deep stillness or in gesture or action, I am expressing in humility, gratefulness, and awe-soaked awareness that I come from God. That I come from Love. As the beloved of God, this makes me kin to all creatures, human and other-than-human, all life forms who, like me, are the progeny of the loving Creator. The original creative act was a labor of love, for the sake of love, by Love. Praise is offering the whole of myself to the Creator Spirit for the wholly unnecessary reality of my being and for the superfluousness of God’s love and generosity.

Praise is joy aimed at God. The joy we feel and express is commensurate with our felt sense (it cannot merely be thought) that our existence is totally derivative. It is the flowering of faith received as revelation that the wonder and mystery of our being is not an accident but rather the mystery and self-bestowal of God’s infinite love.

Praise wells up within us, not by cognition or obligation or in concepts, but in the swell of ineffable wonder that crests as awe and marries the wave to the wind in the luminosity of life responding to Life. Praise is the love sounds and the silence of held breath released in the climax of the coition of awe and joy. Praise is one of the deepest, fullest, most vulnerable, and intimate forms by which humans come together with the divine in the union of love.

After the two essential motivations—praise because God is God, and praise because we live and move and have our being only because of God—we praise God for the extravagance of Her love, the tenderness of His mercy, the plethora of Her blessings, the kindness of His heart, the pathos of Her concern, the solace of His comfort for us and for all creation.

The words I use to describe praise are as inadequate as the words humans use to address God or to express praise. What are puny, finite words in the face of infinite, extravagant love? Nonetheless, praise cannot be denied. So the painter picks up her brush, the sculptor wields his hammer and chisel, the musician works her magic on the piano or with his guitar or sax, the dancer uses the instrument of her body in conjunction with air and gravity and ground and motion and flight, the poet picks up his pen and knowing the poverty and power of language uses words and silence and sound and metaphor just as the mystic naming the ineffable One uses not a few fixed words but many images to pray, to praise, to communicate something like St. Francis was overheard spontaneously praying one day: “My God and my all.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

One of my favorite songs of praise is by the Canadian artist Bruce Cockburn (Co-burn) who is not only a proficient guitarist and singer but also a fine poet. The poet is a master of allusion. In this sung prayer of praise, Cockburn uses fourteen images to address, describe, and allude to the “elusive presence” of the one we too casually call God. It is almost unspeakable to suggest that someone could improve on Dante who wrote in The Divine Comedy (Paradiso) of “the love that moves the sun and the other stars,” but I believe Cockburn’s riff on the Italian master’s words actually does so with this refrain: “O Love, that fires the sun keep me burning.” I use this refrain often as a mantra-prayer throughout my day. I like the way it connects the personal and the cosmic which both are always at play in giving praise.

Read and listen below to my favorite song of praise Lord of the Starfields.

Lord of the starfields,
Ancient of Days,
Universe Maker,
here’s a song in your praise.

Wings of the storm cloud,
beginning and end,
you make my heart leap
like a banner in the wind.

O Love that fires the sun
keep me burning.

Lord of the starfields,
sower of life,
heaven and earth are
full of your light.

Voice of the nova,
smile of the dew,
all of our yearning
only comes home to you.

O Love that fires the sun
keep me burning.

Bruce Cockburn, “Lord of the Starfields,”
from Lord of the Starfields, © 1976 High Mountain Music, Ltd.

Friends of THE ALMOND TREE, if you find these reflections beneficial please pass them on to anyone you know who might appreciate them as well.

ARTWORK: “Prayer-Psalm,” (Top) by Julie Lonneman. Used with the Artist’s permission. SEE more about Julie and her work here.

*Adam (אדם) literally means “red”, and there is an etymological play on words and connection between adam and adamah, adamah designating “red clay” or “red ground” in a non-theological context.