New Orientation and the Psalms

Continues to be a good time to wander in Brueggemann’s The Message of the Psalms. Here are a few paragraphs on “new orientation.” Make sure to read the Psalms mentioned after the quote — if you’re like me, you can get stuck on just the words of the author and forget the Word of the Author!:)
“But obviously the move into disorientation is not the only move made in the faith of Israel or in the literature of the Psalms. While the speaker may on occasion be left ‘in the Pit,’ (as in Ps. 88), that is not the characteristic case. Most frequently the Psalms stay with the experience to bring the speech into a second decisive move, from disorientation to new orientation. That is, the Psalms regularly bear witness to the surprising gift of new life just when none had been expected. That new orientation is not a return to the old stable orientation, for there is no such going back. The psalmists know that we can never go home again. Once there has been an exchange of real candor, as there is here between Yawheh and Israel, there is no return to the precandor situation.
Rather the speaker and the community of faith are often surprised by grace, when there emerges in present life a new possibility that is inexplicable, neither derived nor extrapolated, but wrought by the inscrutable power and goodness of God. That newness cannot be explained, predicted, or programmed. We do not know how such a newness happens any more than we know how a dead person is raised to new life, how a leper is cleansed, or how a blind person can see (cf. Luke 7:22). We do not know; nor do the speakers of these psalms. Since Israel cannot explain and refuses to speculate, it can do what id does best. It can tell, narrate, recite, testify, in amazement and gratitude, ‘lost in wonder, love, and praise.’ (123-124, The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann) Psalm 76, 87, 103, 117 are examples that include new orientation.