The Psalms: A Sanctuary for the Soul
Discover the Psalms as you've never encountered before—alive, relational, and transformative.
For thousands of years, the Psalms have voiced humanity’s deepest longings for God—offering comfort in suffering and joy in renewal. In the second volume of a groundbreaking five-part series, relational theologian and therapist Marty Folsom continues his journey into the Garden of God, tracing seasons of transformation shaped by the Psalms and David's lived faith. We walk with a broken heart toward restoration (Psalm 51), wrestle honestly with wisdom amid conflict (Psalm 54), and enter the stillness of silent retreat.
Teaching us to live faithfully in the tension between beauty and grief, and finding strength in God’s enduring lovingkindness, this new volume is committed to what the psalms do so well: finding healing in the hard places. It receives you as you are—with real bodies, real breakdowns, real questions, and real honesty. Sickbeds, stress, and inner turmoil become sacred ground where God meets you, not problems faith has to explain away.
Praise for The Psalms: A Sanctuary for the Soul: Book 1: 1-30
“I’ve been spending some time with the…first volume of The Psalms: A Sanctuary for the Soul, an interpretive guidebook by the relational theologian Marty Folsom. Folsom doesn’t just analyze the psalter; he works to get inside its emotions…He centers the discussion around God’s unfailing love, a love that enables God to wait patiently as we struggle to apprehend, acknowledge, and accept it.” Ron Hogan, Friends Journal newsletter
“I have been reading a lot of psalms lately and find they really help me process my grief. Motivated by Marty Folsom’s book The Psalms: Sanctuary for the Soul in which he walks through each psalm one at a time, I like to read through a psalm in several different versions, slowly, sometimes aloud and allow the cadences of the rhythm, slightly different in each version to settle into my soul. Then I read through the section on the appropriate psalm in [Folsom’s] book.” Christine Sine, author of Walking in Wonder on Substack
“In this remarkable book, you will find the Psalms rendered fresh, vibrant, and newly transparent to the living God…Running through every page of Folsom’s book is the conviction that the Psalms are not merely objects of study, specimens for the literary analyst, but media of encounter with a God whose very heart is alive with the rhythm of love.” —Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, and the McDonald Agape Director and founder of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts
"The book of Psalms is a gift that keeps on giving. In order to receive that continuing gift, however, careful, attentive, imaginative work of interpretation is required. In this volume (and the other yet to follow) Marty Folsom does much of this hard work for us and with us. He provides playful imagery that opens vistas of communication. He offers suggestive poetry alongside the poetry of the Psalms and is steady in his focus on the God who occupies the Psalter. The reader is invited to join in this good work, to make fresh connections between this old poetry and our own lived reality." —Walter Brueggemann, author of The Prophetic Imagination
“Wow, just wow! I love the design of this, the poetry, the invitation for people to abide in the Psalms and meditate on them. Perhaps my favorite part is the parallel of the English translation with a freer poetic version on the left. This is a beautiful way to recover the more formal translation in parallel with poetic creativity.” —Libby Backfish, associate professor and director of Bible Studies, William Jessup University