I am sure that this will be one of many blogs devoted to what has been happening in Virginia over the last 24 hours in regards to the shooting there. As I was in the bookstore this morning my boss was asking us how we were processing the whole situation and my friend noted that he is having a difficult time experiencing compassion in the situation and is not sure why. I think that this is a legitimate observation, particularly in the midst all of the disasters and horrible tragedies that occur everyday in our world. How do we properly grieve for the horrors of the world and not become overcome by sadness that we are unable to get up in the morning? I struggle with this (and on a side note was rather annoyed by the proclivity to blame among the media rather than attempt to assist in the grieving process) because I believe that one of the grandest callings of Christians is to be a kind of people who honor ALL of life, whether this is our enemy in another country or our enemy at home, and I believe this means grieving for all of life. I am beginning a project on the book of Lamentations and have been impressed by the intracacies of the lament in that book. The entire book is an acrostic of lament (each line beginning with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet) and I was struck this morning how sophisticated the language of lament was to those ancient peoples and how important that is for Christians to resurrect. We need to revitalize lament, not just in an off-the-cuff fashion, but through the means of artistic expression that are able to grasp the depth of sadness and through that revitalize hope in who we should be as a people of God. Here is my first attempt:
What do you do with a life that is no more?
Does it make sense to allow my heart to feel it all?
If I go there will I ever come back?
In allowing myself to die with them can I arrive at the depth of their pain?
It is senseless, it is vile, it is gross, it is revolting, it can be redeemed
Was God crying as that man pulled the trigger?
If God cried should I not be crying too?
Where else was God crying today?
What did I forget to grieve?
May lament help us arrive at the realization that this is not what life is meant to be and this carnage is NOT "simply human." Try living lament.
"They charge me with fanaticism. If to be feeling alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large." - William Wilberforce.
2 comments:
I'm probably not ready to say anything profound about lament, mainly because I am not the most compassionate person in the world and, quite frankly, I know very little about what it is to truly mourn. However, I will say that I am also reading Lamentations for my own personal study, mostly stemming from a desire to learn more about suffering with God's people and the main thing I am learning is that we (Christians) have no idea what it means to lament. Our churches teach us to put on happy faces, cover up our problems, and "party for Jesus." While I have no problem with celebrating the joy of the Lord, I do have a problem when it is fake, contrived, of forced beyond what is healthy. Hopefully, I will grow in my understanding of what it means to carry burdens, walk with the destitute, and mourn with those suffering.
Adam
The profound sadness that comes when a cypher chooses to multiply the inner turmoil by "taking others with him" is simply inconsolable. I grieve for the parents (all of the parents) and the friends who lived with, next to, and within reach of those who died. I think we have to be better at violating someone's freedom and 'personal space' if their signals emanate the angst the shooter must have been feeling. I think God was crying with every pull of the trigger, even with the pull that took the shooter's own life.
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