 Grace in the Moment
By Mary van Balen-Holt
Lament expresses our pain honestly to God
Many of the Psalms used during Lent are Psalms of lament. They include pleas for God’s help and enumeration of wrongs visited upon God’s people as or on an individual, like David. “O God, the nations have invaded your heritage; They have left the corpses of your servants as food for the birds…”(Ps 79). These psalms are angry and filled with strong language wondering what is taking God so long to set things right and accusing God of abandoning them when they needed Divine help the most. “How long, Lord? Will you be angry forever?” (Ps 79).
These Psalms often ask God to wreak vengeance on the enemy: “Put the wicked to shame, reduce them to silence in Sheol. Strike dumb their lying lips…(Ps 31); “ God sharpens his sword, strings and readies his bow…(Ps 7). Despite the demanding tone of many verses, most Psalms of lament end on a hopeful note, some praising God for expected deliverance: “Those who sow in tears will reap with cries of joy…” (Ps 126); “Let this be written for the next generation, for a people not yet born, that they may praise the Lord: The Lord looked down from the holy heights…to attend to the groaning of the prisoners, to release those doomed to die. Then the Lord’s name will be declared on Zion, the praise of God in Jerusalem…” (Ps 102).
While many of us would not dare to utter accusations against the Holy One, let alone throw them in the Divine face, our Hebrew ancestors had no such qualms. The writers and singers of the Psalms lived in a relationship with God rooted in honesty and a straightforwardness that would make some of us blush.
On the other hand, lament in song is something more familiar. I read a moving story by Simon Romero in the New York Times, March 5 online edition, about the Haitian singer/song writer Beken. A man familiar with suffering since childhood when he lost a leg in a car accident, Beken strums his guitar and sings of “despair and redemption.” He is a modern day lamenter whose work allows the community to acknowledge their affliction and yet, in the end, dare to hope.
According to the article, the terrible conditions after the earthquake that forced Beken and his family to live in a filthy tent camp took his voice and will to write. Mercifully, they were restored when he carried his guitar to an open-air café and sang some of his old favorites. The patrons joined in, singing together about suffering, despair, and redemption. Like the Psalms committed to memory by the Israelites, Beken’s songs are part of the collective consciousness of the Haitian people. Singing them together brought solidarity and hope. Perhaps now he will be able to write and sing new laments that will uplift hearts and help Haitians deal with this latest devastation.
To write and sing lament is a gift. It requires honesty among those who sing it, recognition of brokenness and anguish. There is a bluntness about lament that is refreshing once it is embraced. No energy is expended pretending situations are not as bad as we know they are. No pushing feelings beneath consciousness. No hiding true feelings.
A friend on mine who wrote her PhD dissertation on Lament, Dr. Kathryn Rickert, says this about lament and our tradition: “However, as North Americans...it is unlikely speech, unless we allow selves and our communities to learn a new way of being with God and with each other, i.e. learn how to ‘Talk Back to God.’”
While raising prayers of praise and thanksgiving to the Holy One is appropriate and good, it is sometimes less than honest. God desires an intimate relationship with each and every one of us and placed within us the capacity for it. Intimate relationships demand honesty and God can handle ours. Life is not fair. Horrible things happen. Some are the collective result of human actions and sin. Some, like illness, are the result of being physical beings. But to deny expression of the anguish, frustration, and anger puts distance between God and us. It stunts the deepening of the relationship much as it does in a human relationship.
We might think of Tevia in “Fiddler on the Roof.” His conversations with God were right from the heart, the whole heart. Individually, as well as communally in song and in our liturgy, lament is powerful, healing prayer.
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