"This book is not a systematic treatise, but only a collection of personal notes on the Psalter. They are the notes of a monk, written in the monastic tradition, and one supposes that they might appeal above all to monks. But in this mysterious age, there is no telling whom the book may reach--although no one expects it to reach everybody. As for those readers who can only regard the Psalms as "literature" ... this book will at least offer them some of the reasons why the Psalter seems to be more than literature to those of us who have made it our bread in the wilderness." [Prologue].