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Sunday, May 23, 2010

I Don't Do Poetry

We've just passed the Psalms in our daily Scripture readings.

Perhaps it's odd for someone who loves language to dislike poetry, but I do. When I see words broken into stanzas or -worse- italics, I shudder. I tend to skip poetry in books. I don't think I've read any of the poems in LOTR since the first time when I was 12 and I realized they're all off topic.

This may smack of heresy to some folks. Psalms seems to be the favorite book of the Bible for many people. Not me. I'd rather read the narratives. Even the genelogies don't bother me, because I look for character names.

Give me solid prose with a sprinkling of snappy dialogue and I'm perfectly content. In fact, I prefer reading levitical rules to reading psalms.

I do enjoy Proverbs, though. Years ago, I started reading one chapter of Proverbs a day. There's 31 chapters, so most months it works out perfectly for a simple daily devotional time. They don't stick with me, either. Many proverbs are similar. A few are identical, so it's hard to remember exactly which one said what. But when I read them over and over, the themes sink in and those pop into my head at opportune times.

Like "a fool shows his anger, but a wise man holds his tongue." Not a quote, but a theme. It's kept my mouth shut on a few occasions, I can tell you.

So, if you like Psalms and think I'm nuts, join the club. If you feel this way too, just know you're not alone.

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