In Lent 2013 we are pleased to announce that the Revd Dr John Bartlett and Dr Margaret Daly-Denton will be hosting a course in the Cathedral based on the Psalms. Over 4 Tuesday evenings, the 19th and 26 February and the 12th and 19th of March, participants will be led on a spiritual journey inspired by these texts that continue to be central to the worship of God.

Tuesday 19th February

Professor John Bartlett will discuss when and where the psalms came into being, who wrote them, what occasions they were intended for, and how they became the psalter we know today.

Tuesday 26th February 

Dr Margaret Daly-Denton will show how the earliest believers in Jesus shared their traditional ‘Psalms of David’ in a new community of Jews and Gentiles, and hoe Christians have treasured them ever since.

Tuesday 12th March

Viv Rowett (Membership Secretary of the Society for Old Testament Study) will show how a textile artist presents her understanding of the psalms in a visual way.

Tuesday 19th March

Ian Keatley (Organist and Director of Music) and members of the cathedral choir will demonstrate and discuss the different ways in which Christians throughout the ages have sung the psalms.

In the Epilogue to her book, Psalm-shaped Prayerfulnes, Dr Daly-Denton says “When a psalm is sung, it has a tremendous capacity to make the scriptures ‘repeat’ on us. The metaphor from the digestive process is used intentionally. We are supposed to be ruminants, ‘chewing the cud’ of the scriptures”.

Whatever life is offering to you at present, the psalms have a knack of providing food to sustain on the way. We look forward to welcoming you at 8pm on any of the four Tuesdays evenings listed above.