Singing the Psalms with My Son

By T Wilson Dickinson

What will the future hold for our children? In a time of looming climate catastrophe this question inspires anxiety, fear, and guilt. In Singing the Psalms with My Son, Wilson Dickinson charts a path where the practices of parenting lead to transformation and hope. The everyday tasks of caring for children radiate with the alternative energy of creativity and cooperation. If we learn from them, our homes can become schools for movements of joy and justice, rather than fortresses fearfully set against the world. Dickinson turns to the Psalms for guidance on this journey. The prayerful poetry of the Psalter gives us refuge where we can cry in lament, while still joining creation in praising God. With honesty, humility, and humor, Dickinson weaves meditations on individual Psalms with reflections on life as a parent. We accompany him and his son as they find the sacred and revolutionary possibility of ordinary activities--like reading children's books, playing in the backyard, and celebrating holidays. Coupled with guidance for personal and communal use, these meditations invite us to harness the power of parental love and childish wonder to work for a hopeful future.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1666743933
• ISBN13: 9781666743937
• Release Date: June 2023
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A book for all socially minded Christians--not just parents

Dickenson’s Singing the Psalms with My Son functions as a scripturally-based, progressive devotional of sorts for those who want their faith to inform their concern for a suffering planet and a more equitable world. Readers would do well to keep each chapter’s psalm open in front of them as Dickenson works through ten different Psalms, alternating between a careful reading the passage and his experience as a parent longing to offer his son a better world. Dickenson draws out the ways children and Scripture invite us to do more than make a few small changes; He demonstrates how they call us to imagine entirely different ways of ordering our life together that are more just, equitable and relational. Unlike so many books that focus on the problem, Dickenson focuses on outlining alternative, more wholistic, patterns of living that Scripture readily offers when we read with care. Dickenson is honest about the challenges and discouragement that remain part of the journey even as he offers hopeful new-old patterns from his own family, keeping his suggestions grounded in the reality of modern life. The two appendixes invite readers to actively engage in the conversation. The first appendix offers guidance on devotional readings of the psalms and the second offers questions for reflection and group discussion to help readers begin imagining how these ideas might intersect with their own lives. This is not just a book for parents; all socially minded Christians will find resources in this book to encourage and challenge them as they seek to live as people of faith, members of the vast human and more than human community on earth.