Praying the Psalms

A Book Review

Nan Lewis Doerr.
Praying the Psalms with Beads: A Book of Daily Prayers.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020.

Review by Dr. Jill Firth

Have you ever started to pray and found yourself mindlessly gazing into space, or worrying about an upcoming meeting, or distracted by random thoughts? Such difficulties in prayer have been experienced by people through the ages, and they have come up with various suggestions for staying focused or returning to focus on God. These strategies often include an action with the body: posture such as kneeling or standing, or movement including prayer walking and labyrinths. Word-based structures such as praying from the lectionary, a prayerbook or devotional, or writing down prayers can be used. Recently, ordinary manual practices such as doodling or colouring books have come into vogue to aid concentration, along with knitting, and crochet, and maybe even stress balls or fidget spinners. Some practices lost to Protestants have been retrieved – praying with art, icons, or holding crosses. Praying with beads is another such possibility. Like these other practices, praying with beads is not for everyone, but some might find the tactile sense of the beads, the structured prayers, and the clear progression of the prayers to be helpful.

Praying the Psalms can be daunting. Some psalms are short, but the emotions are intense. We can read through some psalms in under a minute, but we wish to go deeper and to be immersed in the flow of the writer’s relationship with God and our own communion with him. Other psalms are long, and may seem repetitive, and some seem harsh. We want to treasure them as God’s word, but they can seem indigestible. Praying the Psalms with Beads suggests one way to move through the whole Psalter more accessibly. The repetition can give us time to savour the imagery or the heartfelt prayer, or to sink more deeply into worship. The segmentation of the text means that about the same time is used every day, unlike trying to read Psalm 117 (2 verses) on one day, and Psalm 119 (176 verses) on another.

In Praying the Psalms with Beads, Nan Lewis Doerr offers an introduction to praying using beads followed by short segments of Psalms for daily prayer. Doerr, an Episcopal priest, describes a method of praying Scripture using a circle of prayer beads. Any beads can be used to pray, however, Doerr describes Anglican prayer beads with a circle of 32 beads, comprising four large beads and twenty-eight small beads. The four large beads are spaced out to signify the cross, each large bead separated from the others by seven smaller beads. There is one more bead to mark the beginning and end of the prayer time, which has a small cross attached to it.

The book covers the whole Psalter in order, from beginning to end. Longer psalms are broken up into sections. There are 182 segments, each taking 5 minutes, so the full Psalter of 150 psalms can be prayed in 6 months. The book suggests a line of a psalm to pray on each large bead, and a line to repeat seven times using the smaller beads, to enable reflection on the content. The book provides the lines for each bead, so it is easy to follow. Some of Doerr’s psalms include lines that are slightly displaced. Since the suggested time is only 5 minutes, the prayer with beads could be preceded by reading or bible study on the text, before praying the psalm.

Once the method is familiar, a person could continue to use it with any text they choose. The prayers could also be used without beads, on a treadmill, or while knitting or colouring in, etc. The book is a small, handy size, suited to a holiday, retreat, or prayer day. For those who find that they concentrate better when they are doing something with their hands, praying the Psalms with beads could be worth trying.

Jill Firth is Lecturer in Hebrew and Old Testament at Ridley College in Melbourne. She is an Anglican priest, and a trained spiritual director.