08/10/2020
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Sarah Teather, Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service UK
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Sarah Teather, Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service UK
Good morning.The stories of the grieving, wrote the poet Ann Weems, are too painful for salvation to come through self-help. “Our only hope is to march ourselves to the throne of God and in loud lament cry out the pain that lives in our souls.”
Weems’ extraordinary book of poetry, Psalms of Lament, was published 25 years ago, in the aftermath of the murder of her son, but seems to give voice to the unanswered pain of others in the world throughout generations. Grief, she said, would not be resolved “until God Himself wipes the tears from our eyes.”
What is most striking to me about Weems’ writing is the brutal honesty and directness of her speech to God.
In one poem, that seems uncannily current, she cries
“How long will you watch, O God,
as we your people live huddled in death?”
In another, she lists a litany of global injustice, then accuses and pleads with God
“… is this any way
to run a world?
O Merciful One, let us rest
between tragedies!”
Lament has a form and order in the bible: it makes space for tears and rage, petition and redress, but also expressions of trust and praise. To engage in lament for the world, says the biblical scholar Walter Brueggermann is to engage in a prophetic act of political imagination . We dare to dream of God’s justice, and hold fast to our belief that He will act and transform the pain.
“Ask and it will be given to you”, says Jesus, in St Luke’s gospel, as he praises persistence and assures us of God’s generosity. Perhaps now is the moment to ask on behalf of the suffering world.
We cry to you O Lord! You are our refuge! Attend to our cry!
Amen
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