Lamentation

A liturgy for lament from ‘Opening the doors’

Walter Brueggemann wrote, “Jesus knew what we numb ones must always learn again: that weeping must be real because endings are real; and that weeping permits newness. His weeping permits the kingdom to come… Only those who embrace the reality of death will receive the new life. Implicit in his statement is that those who do not mourn will not be comforted and those who do not face the endings will not receive the beginnings.” Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 57.

Lament is an important part of worship, the Bible is full of lament, from the cries of the Psalmist to the words of Jesus praying in the garden before his arrest and crucifixion. We need to recognise that sorrow and death are part of life and speak out our pain in faith. If we do not mark our losses and grieve it is hard to take the next, forward steps in faith and life.

MAY OUR TEARS SPEAK (LITURGY) God of all, we stand at the door and weep. The world around changed as we watched from our homes. There is much we have lost, loved ones and people we may have come to know, brothers and sisters, friends and family. We have lost some of our freedoms, our way of living and many of our hopes. We have lost security, purpose and role, many fear for their livelihood and that of their families. We have grieved in silence and solitude, we have watched our departed become statistics, our mourning displaced by daily charts and unfeeling graphs. May our tears speak where our words cannot.

God of community, we stand at the door and weep. We have lost time to learn and explore, friendships faded through absence, celebrations long dreamed of missed and forgotten. Hard worked for ambitions and personal goals handed to strangers to determine. We have watched as pixelated grandchildren took their first step and connections dropped at crucial moments. We have distanced ourselves from friends and neighbours, waved from behind fences and shouted through windows. We have lost the casual connection, the supermarket aisle catch-up, the unexpected conversation. We have watched as friends and neighbours turned on each other, as frustration and indignation tore families apart. May our tears speak where our words cannot.

God of the church, we stand at the door and weep. We have missed each other, we have tried to hold it together, we have zoomed and skyped but as good as they are, we have missed the way a smile infects a room and the sparkle of the spirit in each other’s eyes. We have longed for the handshake and the hug, the hand on the shoulder and the clap on the back. We have been so desperate to sing songs of peace and joy, to break bread and share words that we have clung to what we can stream. We have become fixated on return when you call us forward. May our tears speak where our words cannot.

God of peace, we stand at the door and weep. We offer ourselves as peacemakers, as healers and lovers. We do not have the answer, but we share the tears of those around us. We have still more to lose, because things will never be the same, we must find a new way to be, your way. A way that may mean letting go of all that we longed for as you gift us a new calling to a new world. But in this moment, we stand at the door and weep for what we have lost and will lose, We weep for those whose passing we have not been able to mark, for those whose grief we have not been able to ease, for those whose lives have been ripped apart and whose future feels shattered. God all we ask is you hear our cries in the silence, our tears in the stillness, our prayers in the gap between what was and what is to come. May our tears speak where our words cannot.

God of creation, we stand at the door and weep for what has ended and for what there is to come. We weep for endings and beginnings, we weep for a church that is changed, a world that is hurting and for the kingdom that is to come. May our tears speak where our words cannot.

16 Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. 17 Relieve the troubles of my heart, and bring me out of my distress. 18 Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. 19 Consider how many are my foes, and with what violent hatred they hate me. 20 O guard my life, and deliver me; do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. Psalm 25:16-20

Photo by Aliyah Jamous on Unsplash

Unlocking

Unlocking, seeking, push my fingers through the gap,
searching for a surface on the space that is emerging,
listening for a rhythm that the life beyond is turning,
Morning
Mourning
Passing in the crack that now chases round the birthing,
Straining to a place where the edges fight the blurring,
To prey
To pray
Holding to the difference of a heart beginning beating,
Rushing to embrace what may be only fleeting,
A piece
A peace

Night Rain

The sound of rain falling in the deep night is a reminder that every now and then the world needs washing. The dirty streets littered with our selfish striving and strewn with the harshest words, dropped casually during the day, need to be cleaned. Hopes forcibly squeezed out and dreams stolen wait to be washed into drains, longing to be recycled and fed back in sleep’s stories. Prayers of the ones no longer here descend to rattle against our walls and fences, some seep through gaps and splits to water shoots of memory. Fall night rain fall.

Prayer for personal peace

In the turmoil of life, in the chaos of the storm, when you lose your sense of direction and place… in the dreams you have that seem too distant and out of reach… in your self doubt and feelings of failure and being an imposter… in your addictions and the needs that dominate your thinking… in your deepest pain and brokenness, illness and heart ache… in the emptiness of being alone and the incessant noise of the crowd… May you find still and rich peace, peace that is beyond measure and understanding, peace that cuts through the collected crap and soothes your soul.

We are only people

We are only people,
We tie our hands to straining beasts,
That promise only stretching goals,
Elastic expectations, Self imposed.
We cannot reach, We are no good.
We fail at what we set ourselves,
We cannot measure up.
So stop and sit and be.
And hear the voice inside release.
Let go the ropes that pull,
The one tied to what was,
The one tied to what won’t,
The one tied to the other you,
That whips the fear within.
Sit and share the tears and tears.
Stop and sit and be.
We are only people.

Peace

Peace is an action, it is not what is left when the noise stops.
Peace is a choice, it will not materialise miraculously from nowhere.
Peace is a struggle for change, not a passive acceptance of what is.
Peace must be made by the willing and the heartbroken.
Peace must be built by lives of grace and determination.
Peace must be grown from deliberate acts of mercy and justice.
Blessed are the peacemakers.

Margins

Ripping and shredding,

Torn from the top,

Wilfully separated,

On the altar of “Us”.

Sinfully split.

Painfully parted.

Barriers bolted and raised to the roof,

Lines strongly marked in the dust of the floor,

Cemented, constructed,

dividing, defined.

We built the walls,

we tore the flesh.

We pushed them over and slammed shut the gate!

We raised the flags.

We sang the songs.

We became us,

So they became them.

And now as we wane and struggle for breath,

We open the gates and we wave,

And we “save”.

We sure up our towers,

We repaint our walls,

We gild bright our faces,

And say, “look what we’ve got!”

I dream of contrition,

Of bloody, bent knee.

Of humble demolition,

Fading power released.

Father forgive us,

We know not what we’ve done!

Look deep

Look deep, my friend, look deep,

When you don’t know who it is you look for.

When the questions of the night survive the darks slow end,

And patience speeds away in breathing change.

Look deep,

for now might be the time it can be found,

Deep amongst the childhood tales,

Woven in the half sung songs of youth,

Pushing to be heard in loss and gift,

Seeking and reaching,

Hiding well,

In the remembered gaze of the loved.

In pictures painted with couldn’t care less strokes,

That had no fear of crossing lines,

And bleeding out.

Listen deep to what once whispered happy ever after now,

And span and ran against imagined skies.

Look deep, my friend, look deep.

For She may still sing.

Difference

When I see you,

I see the things that are me,

and I see things that aren’t.

We share so much and yet,

It is the things we don’t,

that give charge to the spark.

I often wonder why and how,

What scribed the roads you’ve walked?

What days have dawned and passed and set?

What fights you’ve left unfought?

And in the dark what spins your mind,

and weaves into your dreams?

If I could see your first light thought,

Would it reflect my own?

So when you look at me,

what image do you see?

Sometimes I almost wish I knew,

and then maybe I don’t.

If I was all of you, and you of me.

What would there be to wonder?

What would there be to seek?

How could we leap into the new,

and touch the sharp unknown?

If you and I were of one mind,

that edge would never hone.

Life would leak and seep and drain,

And fade in knowings dawn.

When?

When she looked she saw the same old view,

Different faces, even different places,

But still the same.

Still the same.

The breath inside her drove up and out in a sad exhalation,

Unplanned, unconscious, unthinking,

disappointingly irresistible.

Again they told her things have changed,

Its a brand new world, glitter strewn and crisp.

Whatabout, they said, remember when.

But she saw nothing fresh,

she looked hard, so hard,

there it was, not what she wanted to see, but there.

But we dreamed, she cried, we hoped,

You claimed to be on our side, we stood together.

Be patient, you said, the time will come.

But when?