ThePsalms.Church
Why This Exists
Years ago, teaching a Bible study, I watched people's eyes glaze over — the sacred language that formed generations had become, for them, a wall instead of a doorway. Eugene Peterson faced the same problem in his congregation, and "The Message" was his answer: Scripture rendered fresh, so first-time readers could feel what the first hearers felt.
This project stands in that spirit. It began with music — setting psalms to the Caribbean rhythms and world styles beloved by the congregation I serve. But every English translation of the Psalms written in the last 500 years is under copyright, and I could not legally sing the Scriptures in any contemporary voice I did not create.
So I created one. Working in collaboration with Claude, an AI assistant, under my direction and editing throughout — a partnership disclosed openly in the book itself — I completed an original paraphrase of all 150 psalms: direct, rhythmic, contemporary, and faithful to the shape and fire of the originals.
The archaic scaffolding is gone. The beauty and the danger remain. The lament psalms still bleed, the praise psalms still blaze, and Psalm 88 still ends in the dark — because the Psalter's oldest promise is that every human cry can be carried into the presence of God.
The Psalter long prayed in Anglican and Episcopal worship traces back to Myles Coverdale, whose 1535 translation was the first complete Bible printed in English. His Psalms were so beloved that when the more literally precise King James Bible arrived in 1611, the Church deliberately kept Coverdale's older, more musical Psalter rather than replace it — a choice renewed again in 1662, and still felt in the 1979 revision prayed today. Coverdale did his work decades before the Reformation hardened into the separate traditions we now call Anglican, Catholic, or Protestant — his Psalms belong, in a real sense, to every English-speaking Christian who came after. Nearly five hundred years of unbroken use lie behind those words. This paraphrase doesn't presume to improve on them — only to offer a companion in a different key, for readers that Psalter was never quite written to reach.
"The glory was always there — hidden in a stained sidewalk, stepped on by people for decades, waiting for an ordinary person, with love, wisdom, and courage, to look down and catch a glimpse of something holy — unexpected, powerful, glorious — that had been there all along. The psalms make the same claim about every ordinary human life."
"Someone Hiding in the Trees"
photograph of stained sidewalk
Freely Given. Never Sold.
This book is not for sale, and it never will be. It was made to be given away - like the Grace it points to.
When it is released, you may copy it, print it, email it, post it, and hand it to a stranger, free of charge, under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). No one — including the author — may ever sell it. A paperback will exist at printing cost only; the author receives no royalty and no profit, by design and in writing.
"Freely you have received; freely give." — Matthew 10:8
This is a devotional and evangelistic work. It is not a liturgical text, and it makes no claim on the texts authorized for worship in any church.
Taste and See
Five psalms from the complete Psalter of one hundred fifty.
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd.
I have everything I need.
He lays me down in deep green grass,
walks me beside still water,
and breathes life back into my soul.
He leads me down the right roads —
that's just who he is.
Even walking through the valley,
the one dark as death itself,
I'm not afraid.
You're with me.
Your rod, your staff —
they steady me.
You set a table for me
right in front of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil.
My cup? It's running over.
Goodness and mercy are chasing me down
every single day of my life,
and I'm going to live in the house of the Lord
forever.
Psalm 1
You want a good life? Here's where it starts:
Don't walk with the cynics.
Don't stand with the crowd going nowhere.
Don't sit down where the scoffers sit.
No — fall in love with what God says.
Chew on it morning and night.
Let it live in you.
Do that, and you're a tree by the river —
roots down deep, drinking all year,
fruit right on time, leaves that stay green.
Whatever you touch comes alive.
Not the wicked. Not even close.
They're chaff — dry husks —
one good wind and they're gone.
No footing when the judgment comes,
no seat among the people of God.
Because God watches the road of the righteous,
and the road of the wicked?
It just... runs out.
Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip;
the One who keeps you will not doze off.
Look — the One who keeps Israel
never dozes,
never sleeps.
The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun will not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out
and your coming in,
from now on —
and forever.
Psalm 30 (excerpt)
Sing to the Lord, all you faithful ones!
Give thanks to his holy name!
His anger lasts a moment;
his favor lasts a lifetime.
Weeping may move in for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
...
And you did it —
you turned my mourning into dancing.
You stripped off my funeral clothes
and dressed me in pure joy,
so that my whole heart could sing to you
and never, ever stop.
Psalm 150
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary!
Praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his acts of power!
Praise him for his surpassing greatness!
Praise him with the blast of the trumpet!
Praise him with the harp and the guitar!
Praise him with tambourine and dancing!
Praise him with strings and pipes!
Praise him with the crash of cymbals!
Praise him with the clashing, ringing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath
praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Lyrics from The Book of Psalms: A 21st Century Paraphrase.
Music produced by the author using Suno, an AI music platform, with human direction and editing throughout.
Shared freely; not for sale.
This project was born singing.
Before it was a book, it was music —
psalms set to the blues, to reggae and rock steady
to the sounds of the congregation I serve.
Here is a taste. The full collection, Music of the Psalms, follows the book.
Hear the Psalms
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The Road to Release
Before publication, this paraphrase is being tested where it matters most: in conversation with pastors and priests across many traditions. Some are reading a psalm a day, the same day, following a rhythm centuries old — Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, non-denominational, it makes no difference. Others are sharing, in conversation, the psalm that has carried them through something real in their own ministry — a story that, with their permission, may accompany that psalm when this book finally reaches you. Every tradition that has ever prayed a psalm has something to teach this one.
The complete book — all 150 psalms, free to download, copy, and share — is targeted for release in Advent 2026, as a gift to the wider church at Christmas.
Liquid Trees on Mirror Lake
About
The Reverend Robert J. Goodridge — Father Rob — is an Episcopal priest with thirty years experience in broadcast media before ordination, a saxophonist, and a nationally recognized abstract fine art photographer. He serves a congregation with deep West Indian roots on Florida's Treasure Coast, where this project was born: in Bible studies, in Caribbean praise music, and in the conviction that everyone should know how deeply God loves them — and respond to that love. The cover photograph, "Liquid Trees on Mirror Lake" — trees reflected in still water, then turned upside down yielding a new view of God's creation. And the image, "Someone Hiding in the Trees" was revealed in a photograph of a sidewalk stain near his home — are his own. Neither was digitally manipulated. The glory was already there, waiting to be seen.