This Psalm, set to the tune Rathlin Island by Brian Connors, is written from the farthest oceans and the ends of earth and seeks a reminder of hope out of a place of despair. Wondering if God will listen when facing a difficult situation, and remembering God as Creator of the mountains and silencer of storms, the Psalmist takes strength in God’s great salvation and redemption of even the greatest sorrows.

Continue your reflections with the accompanying journal, which includes further questions for reflection and some invitations to prayer and practice.

Paid subscribers receive a free journal PDF, or you can purchase a paperback version

Visit the Celtic Psalms website for scores/books, mp3s, CDs, and videos for You’re the Hope

Find out more about the Habits for the Spirit course: an 8-week online course exploring habits and daily spiritual practices to promote wellbeing in body, mind, and spirit

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In this week’s Easter Psalm, we hear a song of praise to the healer of our souls. It’s a Psalm that creates a vibrant image of earth, moon, and stars singing praise together to the God of Love.

Following the season of Lent, this Psalm takes on a deeper meaning. This is a song of joy in the God who doesn’t ignore our laments, but offers solace for the soul. And at the end of the song, we hear the words of the Doxology woven in, thanking God for provision and care, and also asking that God’s healing, joyful, compassionate love would be experience throughout the earth.

This song is deceptively lighthearted. It truly is a joyful song to sing. Yet it looks under the surface at the needs of this broken and conflicted world, and it recognizes the love of God that rises up above all of that, offering us other way.

You can find lyrics, scores/books, mp3s, CDs for Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.

Find our more about our music at www.celticpsalms.com

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Written by Ireland’s great composer Turlough O’Carolan, Eleanor Plunkett is a cascading tune, set here to a Psalm of yearning and praise. It begins with longing like a “dry land,” acknowledging our deep desire to be in God’s presence, through which we can be “satisfied” as though our thirst is quenched.

Continue your reflections with the accompanying journal, which includes further questions for reflection and some invitations to prayer and practice.

Paid subscribers receive a free journal PDF, or you can purchase a paperback version

Visit the Celtic Psalms website for scores/books, mp3s, CDs, and videos for O God, You Are My God

Find out more about the Habits for the Spirit course: an 8-week online course exploring habits and daily spiritual practices to promote wellbeing in body, mind, and spirit

Follow Kiran’s monthly reflections on Bless My Feet

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Happy Easter, listeners!

I can’t lead a Lenten series without marking its culmination in the joy and hope of Easter. For the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the Psalms of joy and hope that come at the end of the book of Psalms. What I love about those Psalms is that the hope they offer doesn’t ignore the suffering and brokenheartedness of the world ~ they tend to those hurts and pains, and they recognize the God who offers healing and hope in the midst of life’s challenges. These Psalms sing praise to the God who looks after the vulnerable, who looks after those without power, who loves those whom society might cast aside. So in this week after Easter, we hear this Psalm of praise to the God who knows suffering, who stands with the suffering. This is a God who will outlast the rulers of this world, who lifts the lowly and shows care to the stranger, who cares for the widow and orphan, who welcomes the refugee, whose goodness and mercy never come to an end. And so, in this Easter week, we sing “Hallelujah.”

You can find lyrics, scores/books, mp3s, CDs for Hallelujah.

Find our more about our music at www.celticpsalms.com

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This arrangement, set to the wordless tune ‘Caisleán an Óir,’ portrays the urgency and energy with which the psalmist may have written these words. In this Psalm, we find numerous images of the various ways God can provide refuge and shelter for us when we feel we are at the “end of earth.”

Continue your reflections with the accompanying journal, which includes further questions for reflection and some invitations to prayer and practice.

Paid subscribers receive a free journal PDF, or you can purchase a paperback version

Visit the Celtic Psalms website for scores/books, mp3s, CDs, and videos for Hear My Cry, O God

Find out more about the Habits for the Spirit course: an 8-week online course exploring habits and daily spiritual practices to promote wellbeing in body, mind, and spirit

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In this final week of Lent, Holy Week, we really settle into what we’ve been preparing ourselves for since Ash Wednesday: the silence of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The questions that, for a time, went unanswered. The injustice and cruelty that couldn’t be undone. The cavern of grief and loss, of betrayal and failure. The abandonment, the forsakenness.

All this we find in the brutally honest questions posed in Psalm 88. Jesus may have prayed the words of Psalm 22 on the cross, saying “Why have you forsaken me?” but his words also allude to this other Psalm that also cries out from a place of grief, suffering, and a sense of abandonment. While Psalm 22 turns at the end toward praise and hope, Psalm 88 sits longer with the questions, which are never answered or tied up with a neat bow.

Life doesn't always work like that ~ at least, not right away. The hope, though, can be found in the fact that these questions are put into words as a prayer ~ posed to a God who may not answer right away, but who is listening, and who tends to our pain and suffering, and who will remain long after those questions subside.

So this Holy Week, we take courage to sit in the silence with our unanswered questions. We sit in silence with the God of our salvation.

You can find lyrics, scores/books, mp3s, CDs for God of My Salvation.

Find our more about our music at www.celticpsalms.com

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Telling the story of a person hurt by human relationship, this Psalm captures the desire to find shelter in the midst of turmoil. Exploring the concept of home being a place where our hearts can be at rest, this Psalm set to the moving Irish traditional melody Ned of the Hill, addresses that yearning we all have for a place where we can be truly ourselves, fully accepted, safe from the tempests and storms of life.

Continue your reflections with the accompanying journal, which includes further questions for reflection and some invitations to prayer and practice.

Paid subscribers receive a free journal PDF, or you can purchase a paperback version

Visit the Celtic Psalms website for scores/books, mp3s, CDs, and videos for Wings of a Dove

Find out more about the Habits for the Spirit course: an 8-week online course exploring habits and daily spiritual practices to promote wellbeing in body, mind, and spirit

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Lent is a time in the church year when we look inwardly at our own betrayals, small or large, our own missteps or wrongdoings, our own culpability and responsibility in the dynamics of the structures of the world we live in. This can leave us feeling uncomfortable and exposed. It’s hard to admit and acknowledge where we ourselves have gone wrong, where we ourselves need to seek forgiveness ~ from others, from God, or possibly from ourselves. In the words of Psalm 130, which meets us in the depths, we hear the reminder that with God, forgiveness can be found. Because we know this, because we trust this, we can have the courage it takes to confess our own sins, knowing that this is the first step toward making things right. And in this song, we hear the words of the next Psalm (131) woven in ~ the quiet of our souls at rest in the arms of our loving and forgiving God, offering solace and strength as we reflect on the part we can play in making the world a better place.

You can find lyrics, scores/books, mp3s, CDs for From the Depths.

Find our more about our music at www.celticpsalms.com

This is the Lenten Psalms and Practices series, where there is a special weekly podcast on Wednesdays throughout the season of Lent. For paid subscribers, on Fridays, you will receive a short video leading you through a practice each week, as well as an mp3 of the Lenten Psalm.

On Saturday the 12th of April, I will also be offering a Lenten Practices Workshop for paid subscribers, live on Zoom, and I would love for you to join me. If you'd appreciate a chance to go deeper this Lent with these Psalms and practices, I invite you to be part of this journey with me. Become a paid subscriber for a deeper experience of Lenten Psalms and Practices.

Register for the Lenten Workshop (4-6pm UK/Ireland time) here

Follow Kiran’s monthly reflections on Bless My Feet

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This Psalm is known for its messages about a clean heart, forgiveness, and a renewed spirit, and is often used during Lent. Set here with the Irish traditional tune Logan’s Lament, this paraphrase focuses on the imagery of a parent kindly and gently washing away the layers that “hide” us, or that cover up the God-given beauty each one of us possesses, thereby allowing us to be restored to the joy that God intends.

Continue your reflections with the accompanying journal, which includes further questions for reflection and some invitations to prayer and practice.

Paid subscribers receive a free journal PDF, or you can purchase a paperback version

Visit the Celtic Psalms website for scores/books, mp3s, CDs, and videos for Create in Me

Find out more about the Habits for the Spirit course: an 8-week online course exploring habits and daily spiritual practices to promote wellbeing in body, mind, and spirit

Follow Kiran’s monthly reflections on Bless My Feet

Psalms for the Spirit is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

As we come a little closer to the part of Lent in which we follow Jesus to the cross, we remember the loneliness of betrayal and the weariness of his suffering. With this season of the church year in mind, perhaps we hear Psalm 102 a little differently. This is a Psalm written from the experience of someone whose life is cut short before its time. The loneliness and weariness of that particular suffering is evident in the heartrending words of that Psalm. And in this arrangement, we hear echoes of the haunting Irish lyrics, “Táim Cortha ó Bheith im'Aonar i Mo Luí - I am weary from being/or lying alone,” giving voice to that weariness and suffering. So as we listen today, we name our own weariness and suffering before a God who knows, who offers strength and solace, and who in the end will never leave us to face our trials alone.

You can find lyrics, scores/books, mp3s, CDs for I Am Weary

Find our more about our music at www.celticpsalms.com

This is the Lenten Psalms and Practices series, where there is a special weekly podcast on Wednesdays throughout the season of Lent. For paid subscribers, on Fridays, you will receive a short video leading you through a practice each week, as well as an mp3 of the Lenten Psalm.

On the 12th of April, I will also be offering a Lenten Practices Workshop for paid subscribers, live on Zoom, and I would love for you to join me. If you'd appreciate a chance to go deeper this Lent with these Psalms and practices, I invite you to be part of this journey with me. Become a paid subscriber for a deeper experience of Lenten Psalms and Practices.

Register for the Lenten Workshop (4-6pm UK/Ireland time) here

Follow Kiran’s monthly reflections on Bless My Feet

Psalms for the Spirit is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.