On This Day Before I Turn Thirty-Eight / A Contemplation on Lament

 On this day before I turn 38, I sit on a bench absorbing the sun, the wind, the water, the birds, the buzz of the leaf blower in the distance. I withdrew from the world for a bit to this monastic place to empty out.

How can I sum up this last year around the sun? It was a fast and slow one. My hands let go of the merry-go-round eventually. Someone else, or Something else was spinning it. Was it our own wailing that kept it going? Multiple times throughout this past year I tried to grasp one of the bars on this merry-go-round. Sometimes I succeeded and rode it for a awhile, but I got dizzy and fell off.

I fell off a lot. 

I look and see the soil beneath me. It's a little dry and needs watering. Down here, the wailing is quieter, less invasive. I start to notice. I start to see the cracks that are thirsty, the weeds that need pulling, and the areas that need sifting. (Even the Earth groans in our ravage consumption and the sins of our forefathers continue to be reaped). It's hard to see this if I never fall off the merry-go-round. It's hard to even notice when I'm consumed in the wailing, ranting, judging and embodying all that pain. But the savage mercy of God lets me fall so that I can see, notice and listen.

Ranting is transformed into silence.

Judgement morphs into listening.

The pain in my body that metastasized from the world's collective grief around me, (how could I look away? Can I?) melts into a cloak of compassion. A co-sufferer with Christ. 

(Unless a seed falls to the ground, it cannot bear fruit).

I'm compelled to step out of the jury's seat and into the witness stand. 

There's a difficult question that's risen to the surface in my life over this past year: How do I stay in a witnessing position when all Hell is breaking loose in and around God and our world? How do I remain hopeful? This is what I contemplate on this day before I turn 38.

Five things I am told will help.

1. Refract. Don't take the bait of outrage. It can feel wrong not to, I know. The terrors of our lives and world are stark. Like a stained-glass window, which bends light into colors and configurations that bless, we do well to bend the more intense glare of fear, dread, and pain into shades that allow us to feel, name, and engage a broken world.*

Music and art that keep me curious and prayerfully awake to the "surreal underbelly of history" help me stay engaged. The artwork of Madeleine Jubilee Saito helps me stay soft and open. And I always return to the theme song from A Hidden Life. 

2. Be still. This can mean staying still yes, and it can also mean moving ourselves in a way that slows us down, stills us and opens our hearts to who and what matters. Some forms in my life that this takes shape are sitting still in nature and letting what bubbles up be. Sometimes I stay still and talk to God about it, sometimes I get up and walk. I enjoy walking a labyrinth. While walking, sometimes I meditate on these words suggested by William Blaine-Wallace in his book When Tears Sing: The Art of Lament in Christian Community. "Love, beauty, silence, sad, angry, forgive, peace, joy, curiosity, attention, gratitude, relation." The only requirement for this is silence. 

3. Wait patiently. Lament-based prayer is on God's time, not ours. He, a crucified God, is not entitled to "give us the goods, or else." What am I to wait for? Until what? Maybe it's just the patiently waiting that I am called to. The sitting beside the wounded Christ - Christ in the other, and waiting with. I am the witness, not the jury. God delivers. 

4. Stay Curious. This is active, not passive. Ask questions that keep me in a "not knowing" position. Knowledge isn't really power, not truly. What is good and trustworthy but a humble friend? 

5. Cloak Suffering. There is a practice we would do well to take on. One of our black, brown and native brothers and sisters, and that is the prayer shawl. A tangible cloak to soften the weight of the world when we pray. Wallace describes it like this: "Shrouding my ache keeps my mind from trying to understand it, my heart from softening it, my conscience from legitimizing it. Sorrow, suffering, trauma wrapped in deep-hued love opens me to a love that is local and cosmic, particular and universal." I think of Colossians 3:11-13. So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. (Message translation).

Being cloaked in love enables us to look each other in the eye, and without saying anything at all with our mouths, be able to say it's a sad world. And I'm sorry. 

This is the life that the Farmer is calling me to down here in the ground.

The soil is watered now, and with purpose I stand and reach for a bar on the spinning merry-go-round. I grab one firmly, step up and look into the eyes of my neighbor. Other people who fell off earlier onto the ground, rise up too and grab ahold of a bar whizzing by. We see each other's faces, our eyes, our skin. The wailing stops, and for the first time in a long time, the world laments. We see Christ in each other, our shared wounds and the Wounded Healer cloaks us all. 

*Photo by Emerson Matabele. "God's Quarter Acre." Orange Walk, Belize

* All quotes taken from William Blaine-Wallace's book "When Tears Sing: The Art of Lament in Christian Community"