THE BIBLE IN MY LIFE July 14, 2003 Issue

The power of a psalm

By Libby Skala

I love the Psalms . My mother used to say the 23rd Psalm with me every night before I went to sleep. And my grandmother asked me to memorize the 91st Psalm and go over it whenever I traveled in an airplane.

One time, I was in an improvisational acting class in Seattle when Lilia!—a show about my grandmother—was first being developed. The teacher said, "I want to see how Lilia would behave in a crisis situation." He asked me to play my grandmother, and the other actors to play guests at a party in her apartment. He set the scene: There was a fire in the building and everyone was trapped.

Immediately the actors playing the guests leaped into action—they began to panic, afraid we would all die. Playing my grandmother, I had no choice but to be true to who she was. Speaking above the chaos, in my grandmother's rich Austrian accent, I commanded everyone to be still. They stopped in their tracks, having expected her to share their desperation.