PSALM 84

1 How dear to me is your dwelling, o God of hosts!*

My soul has a desire and longing for your courts;

My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God

2 The sparrow has found her a house

and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young,*

by the side of your altars, O God of hosts,

my Ruler and my God.

3 Happy are they who dwell in your house;*

they will always be praising you.

For several years, the sisters of The Order of Saint Helena, a monastic community in the Episcopal Church, have been revising their services of worship. The primary goal of the revision is opening up the human vocabulary of prayer and expanding the ways in which we name and worship God.

This version of the Psalter, based upon the translation in the Book of Common Prayer, softens the exclusively male Hebrew terminology for the Creator God and recasts texts in ways that avoid the need for a he (or she) personal pronoun.