“Lament”
After the First Sunday in Lent, “Lament”.
You learn some good and helpful words in the evangelical church. It’s not all “backsliding” and “love-on”. One of the most helpful words that I came across while in the evangelical church is the word “lament”. A lament is a heartfelt expression of grief and sorrow over loss that is either personal and/or communal.
We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye, glanced towards us:
”I seen ‘em myself!” he said fiercely.
C.S. Lewis
What will we need to emerge from this pandemic?
We will need a vaccine and we have it.
We will need a plan and we mostly have it.
We will need hope and there will be enough hope.
Something else that we will need, to properly and hopefully move towards what is next, is lament. It might be that not everyone will be able or willing to lament the losses. It will be a sorrow and a gift for those who are able to lament. Those who have faced suffering know the importance of lament. Lament is not easy, or comfortable, but it is human, and it does actually enable life.
As of this writing over 500,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19. In Canada the number is near 22,000 deaths. There are under 200,000 people who live on the North Shore of Vancouver (NV District and City and West Vancouver). Imagine all of the people on the North Shore gone and you are not near 50% of the number of deaths from COVID just in the United States.
It is not only the church that sometimes pushes away from lament. Larger culture and society can do so as well. We want positive affirmation and good thoughts. We want to speak happy possibilities. Hopeful Christian theology, however, does not shy away from lament. In every life there will be losses to lament. Considering our larger world, there will always be occasion for lament. As we begin to come out of the pandemic we will see that if we have not learned to lament, our ability to live fully will be curtailed. It is a difficult but real gift to be able to grieve loss.
My Dad died in August of 2020. It was terrible and sudden and has occasioned lament. One of the humanity affirming realities in this sorrow has been that it has allowed me to grieve not only over my own loss, but to connect with the loss I see all around in the world.
We are in the season of Lent in the Christian calendar. This is the 40 days leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It is traditionally a time consider our own mortality, frailty, and our own ability to hurt others and ourselves. For Christians it is a time to consider that Jesus has grieved over the pain in the world, even in our lives, that he has taken on all shortcoming and sin and sorrow.
In the Old Testament there is a book called “Lamentations”. It is understood to have been written by the prophet Jeremiah at the fall of the city of Jerusalem. It starts off with the words, “How deserted lies the city that was full of people!” I think of Bruce Springsteen’s song “My City of Ruin” that he released after 9/11 in 2001 in New York. There was death and loss and chaos all around when Jeremiah wrote a series of lament(ations) for the people to cry out in sorrow. The book is an acrostic poem that uses the Hebrew alphabet to give order to the poem. It is five chapters with each verse of each chapter corresponding to a Hebrew letter. In English it would be A,B,C,D,E … for chapters 1,2,4 and 5 and AAA, BBB, CCC, DDD, … for the middle chapter 3. In the middle of the middle of all the lament is where we find the words,
“But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”
That, in the middle of almost overwhelming pain and lament.
I have pushed away from much that was present in evangelicalism, but I am grateful for a lot as well. I am grateful to have learned the word “lament”.
“Even the hummingbird”
My friend Alwyn lives in Richmond, British Columbia and takes walks in an area that is frequented by birdwatchers. Alwyn takes pictures of some of what he sees. It strikes me that almost every photo he takes is a kind of prayer.
Here is one of a hummingbird:
I look at the photo and begin to think about what is enough, about how I have enough for today, about what a blessing that is, about how grateful I am for that little bird.