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| Henry Daras, Woman Lamenting the End of... |
Considering what the world is going through in this season of Covid-19, I asked Kaitlin Curtice, Marlena Graves, Gena Thomas and Beth Watkins to offer their reflections on lamenting.
KAITLIN CURTICE
The ebb and flow of lament is something that never fully goes away, just shifts as our life seasons change. Right now, we are living in individual and collective lament, and part of being a good human in this world is to honestly face our lament and ask what it requires of us to head toward healing. It will take time; it always does. But I believe when we name our lament and our grief, we become partners with our grief and with one another.
Kaitlin is the author of GLORY HAPPENING, and NATIVE. She is a member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band Nation. You can follow Kaitlin on her website. And on Twitter.
BETH WATKINS
Lament puts a name to pain, hurt, and suffering.
I lamented when I wrote my father’s eulogy. It was also lament when I wrote in my journal, pages upon pages, about my father, our relationship, the pain and confusion I felt. When I cried with my husband, tried to articulate how it felt to my friends in the days after his passing, this was also lament.
Lament is going to therapy and naming and listing each and every loss I incurred when I was forced to leave a country I had made my home. Lament is writing a public essay about infertility and the grief I feel in having a body that does not work like it should. Lament is naming through angry tears the things I cannot do or cannot do well anymore because of chronic pain. Lament is naming a sadness or loss, posting about it, knowing there are others who experience this, can identify, feel heard or seen reading a loss they can also identify as their own. Lament is crying out to God about the injustice I see, my longings for a world where all is made new in a place that seems full of so much pain. Lament is honest that all is not well and names the ways in which that is so.
Lament has no agenda. It doesn’t start at the bottom and plan to sail upward. It is a naming of grief, suffering, pain -- an account of what has been lost, taken, or ruined. It begs to be heard and not forgotten. It refuses to gloss over suffering, doesn’t allow heartbreak to be ignored.
Sometimes we write (publicly or privately), speak, sing, or cry our laments. Sometimes it hurts as much as it did when we began speaking. Sometimes we make it all the way to new hope. Sometimes our words help others feel seen, known. Lament helps us be honest about the universality of suffering, and the hard, angry truth that this suffering in our world can and be unfairly distributed.
We lament to name hard truths, and hope by doing so we can reach the other side, whatever that means, whatever that may take. I believe we must name our losses, sufferings, pain and hurts, and the injustices, failures, and abuses of power we see around us collectively, societally as well if we wish to see new life, new hope flourish.
On her blog, Beth writes about living toward the kingdom of God wherever we find ourselves, seeking grace, and finding neighbors all around us – even in places we didn’t know to look. You can follow Beth on her blog. And on Twitter.
GENA THOMAS
Lament can take many forms. After walking through Ursula Processing Center and Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas in the fall of 2018, I couldn't get comfortable and I couldn't sleep. I took out my green pocket-sized notebook hoping to process through some of what my eyes had seen. Nothing would come. As I put my pen on my notebook, the words I wrote down, the words that came out were cuss words. Big, bold, bubble-letter cuss words. The D-word. The F-word. The S-word. I was embarrassed wondering what the guy sitting next to me would think. But I couldn't stop coloring in the letters of each word. When I told my friend Craig Stewart, and confessed my shame in what came out, he said, “I think that may be more biblical than we were raised to believe: a solid form of lament.” For me, lament often takes shape in my writing, but it happens to my body too. After reading certain news stories, I might fall to the ground and put my head to the floor and experience body-convulsing crying. Or a long walk where I yell at God, fist raised in the air, and anger on my tongue.
I might begin weeping after I read a message from a friend going through something really hard. Sometimes I’ll sit in silence to let the truth of something lamentable wash over me fully. Sometimes, I’ll advocate for a certain cause out of lament that a certain injustice is occurring. When I want to express lament, but don’t know how, I often turn to an acrostic.
In his book Prophetic Lament, Soong-Chan Rah informs the reader of the acrostic lament tool. “The acrostic points to an order beyond our chaos” and reminds us that God is in control even in the midst of suffering. Rah shows the pattern found in the book of Lamentations where the author uses the Hebrew alphabet as a way to guide the lamentations, and find fullness, shape, and form in them. So I’ve written a few laments through acrostics, and they have given me some type of order beyond the chaos I am feeling. Mostly, for someone like me who is often in their head, I have to give myself permission to actually feel the lament. And sometimes that means feeling a need to confess the things I’ve done or ways I’ve contributed to an injustice.
Gena has written SEPARATED BY THE BORDER and A SMOLDERING WICK: Igniting Missions Work With Sustainable Practices. You can follow Gena on her blog. And on Twitter.
MARLENA GRAVES
KAITLIN CURTICE
The ebb and flow of lament is something that never fully goes away, just shifts as our life seasons change. Right now, we are living in individual and collective lament, and part of being a good human in this world is to honestly face our lament and ask what it requires of us to head toward healing. It will take time; it always does. But I believe when we name our lament and our grief, we become partners with our grief and with one another.
Kaitlin is the author of GLORY HAPPENING, and NATIVE. She is a member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band Nation. You can follow Kaitlin on her website. And on Twitter.
BETH WATKINS
Lament puts a name to pain, hurt, and suffering.
I lamented when I wrote my father’s eulogy. It was also lament when I wrote in my journal, pages upon pages, about my father, our relationship, the pain and confusion I felt. When I cried with my husband, tried to articulate how it felt to my friends in the days after his passing, this was also lament.
Lament is going to therapy and naming and listing each and every loss I incurred when I was forced to leave a country I had made my home. Lament is writing a public essay about infertility and the grief I feel in having a body that does not work like it should. Lament is naming through angry tears the things I cannot do or cannot do well anymore because of chronic pain. Lament is naming a sadness or loss, posting about it, knowing there are others who experience this, can identify, feel heard or seen reading a loss they can also identify as their own. Lament is crying out to God about the injustice I see, my longings for a world where all is made new in a place that seems full of so much pain. Lament is honest that all is not well and names the ways in which that is so.
Lament has no agenda. It doesn’t start at the bottom and plan to sail upward. It is a naming of grief, suffering, pain -- an account of what has been lost, taken, or ruined. It begs to be heard and not forgotten. It refuses to gloss over suffering, doesn’t allow heartbreak to be ignored.
Sometimes we write (publicly or privately), speak, sing, or cry our laments. Sometimes it hurts as much as it did when we began speaking. Sometimes we make it all the way to new hope. Sometimes our words help others feel seen, known. Lament helps us be honest about the universality of suffering, and the hard, angry truth that this suffering in our world can and be unfairly distributed.
We lament to name hard truths, and hope by doing so we can reach the other side, whatever that means, whatever that may take. I believe we must name our losses, sufferings, pain and hurts, and the injustices, failures, and abuses of power we see around us collectively, societally as well if we wish to see new life, new hope flourish.
On her blog, Beth writes about living toward the kingdom of God wherever we find ourselves, seeking grace, and finding neighbors all around us – even in places we didn’t know to look. You can follow Beth on her blog. And on Twitter.
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| Man of Sorrows, by James Janknegt |
Lament can take many forms. After walking through Ursula Processing Center and Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas in the fall of 2018, I couldn't get comfortable and I couldn't sleep. I took out my green pocket-sized notebook hoping to process through some of what my eyes had seen. Nothing would come. As I put my pen on my notebook, the words I wrote down, the words that came out were cuss words. Big, bold, bubble-letter cuss words. The D-word. The F-word. The S-word. I was embarrassed wondering what the guy sitting next to me would think. But I couldn't stop coloring in the letters of each word. When I told my friend Craig Stewart, and confessed my shame in what came out, he said, “I think that may be more biblical than we were raised to believe: a solid form of lament.” For me, lament often takes shape in my writing, but it happens to my body too. After reading certain news stories, I might fall to the ground and put my head to the floor and experience body-convulsing crying. Or a long walk where I yell at God, fist raised in the air, and anger on my tongue.
I might begin weeping after I read a message from a friend going through something really hard. Sometimes I’ll sit in silence to let the truth of something lamentable wash over me fully. Sometimes, I’ll advocate for a certain cause out of lament that a certain injustice is occurring. When I want to express lament, but don’t know how, I often turn to an acrostic.
In his book Prophetic Lament, Soong-Chan Rah informs the reader of the acrostic lament tool. “The acrostic points to an order beyond our chaos” and reminds us that God is in control even in the midst of suffering. Rah shows the pattern found in the book of Lamentations where the author uses the Hebrew alphabet as a way to guide the lamentations, and find fullness, shape, and form in them. So I’ve written a few laments through acrostics, and they have given me some type of order beyond the chaos I am feeling. Mostly, for someone like me who is often in their head, I have to give myself permission to actually feel the lament. And sometimes that means feeling a need to confess the things I’ve done or ways I’ve contributed to an injustice.
Gena has written SEPARATED BY THE BORDER and A SMOLDERING WICK: Igniting Missions Work With Sustainable Practices. You can follow Gena on her blog. And on Twitter.
MARLENA GRAVES
What does lamenting mean to me?
Naming individual and collective grief - not repressing it, not denying it. It also means allowing other people to do the same without trying to fix it. I realize there are as many ways to lament as there are personalities. We let people lament as they see fit.
Marlena is the author of A BEAUTIFUL DISASTER, and THE WAY UP IS DOWN: Finding Yourself By Forgetting Yourself. You can follow Marlena on her website. And on Twitter.
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