Category Archives: lament

Lent 5: Purple

27 Monday Mar 2023

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“God of seeing and resurrection, give us the us the strength to mourn and the courage to hope.” (SALT Lenten Project)

On this penultimate week of Lent, the SALT reflection emphasizes, from Matisse, the color purple, a more familiar color that the Church has connected to Lent. In liturgical settings the color is a reminder of penitence, sorrow, loss and darkness. Surely those emotions and locations are part and parcel of our human experience, which I attend to mindfully during my Lenten journey.

I am aware of how some of my Lenten palette needs to include the sad and grieving, the losses that are never-ending, the state of the world–both relationally and systemically. I am leaving space this week to lament the painful, frail and broken pieces of the worlds in which I live.

  • I grieve for the created world–its choked oceans, its volatile air currents, its vanishing species.
  • I grieve for the peoples of this world who suffer–in war, in natural disaster, in oppression, in tyranny.
  • I grieve for my native land so torn apart by hostility, mistrust, misinformation, hatred and cruelty.
  • I grieve for the fragility of communities of faith who are in states of liminality after the advent of COVID-19, wondering how to reimagine who and how they are to be Church.
  • My heart aches for the suffering ones I know personally–the mourning ones, the hurting ones, the frustrated ones, the lonely ones, the ones who have fallen into the Slough of Despond that has crept insistently into our collective life.
  • And I mourn the ways in which I have and done that which is not loving, not helpful, not kind, not compassionate–missed opportunities, ignored signals and neglected openings.

The Light that shine in this important season of Lament is that, grieving is not the last word. Sacred text tells us that “we may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (T hess. 4:13.), The theologian Walter Brueggemann has written that the sacred practice of Lament prepares us for the Hope that is to come; for this in the Christian community, the promise of Resurrection, Life after death. It is a clearing out, a cleansing, a truth telling, that paves the way to be surprised by Joy. I am walking gently, gingerly, honestly through this darkness, trusting that there is Light to come on the other side.

Lent: Lamenting in Grace

30 Wednesday Mar 2022

Posted by in grace, lament, Uncategorized

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All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Flannery O’Connor

I have been looking for evidence of Grace this Lent, finding it tucked away in many of my quotidian tasks, but I never getting too far away from the grief and pain of the world as we are living it now. I have been deeply grateful for the Grace that keeps pouring out, even as I grieve for the places where Grace has not seemed to break through.

Here is my Lenten Lament:

  • I grieve for the many in this world, in my world, who are suffering with so many wounds, hurts and slights–for the lonely, for the unchosen, for the hungry and cold, for the disillusioned, for the betrayed…and I realize that the list of sufferings in this world are endless. I grieve that this is so!
  • I grieve for the deep rooted fear, and hate and cruelty that seem so public, so persistent, so pernicious, and I wonder how it gets so deep hardwired a person, in a culture, and pray that it be taken away.
  • I grieve for the persons so uprooted, displaced and undone by war, by lies, by collapse, by disease.
  • I grieve for the uneven allocation of resources in this world, where so few have so much, and so many have so little; I lament my participation in systems that perpetuate this inequity.
  • I grieve for the pain that persists–in body, in mind, in soul, in relationships, and lament the diminishment of spirit that accompanies that pain.
  • I lament the sins of ancestors–my own and others–who have perpetuated racism, sexism, elitism, exceptionalism, and all other forms of exclusion, dehumanization and oppression, and I pray that I will call out, repent, change my own attitude and behaviors to be more Christlike–healing, including, compassionate, and far reaching.

As I write and pray, I realize that this prayer could go on without end, and maybe it should become a constant part of my prayer practice. Walter Brueggemann calls me to what he calls ‘this prophetic task” to counter our denial and to acknowledge our real losses, both for our connection to God’s world, and to clear the way for Hope to come again. In this second half of Lent, Anne Lamott reminds me that “Grace bats last!” but it does come again. Thanks be to God!