Lament

I started writing this post a little over a week ago – before Trump became ill, before the debate, before Amy Coney Barrett was nominated. I was writing a post about the emotions that we are all feeling - anxiety, stress, depression. I wondered, what do we do with all this chaos? How do we keep a steady course even though the pandemic is raging around us, the environment is in flames, racial reckoning is taking a toll on us and our politics make it a challenge to love our neighbors? One week later these questions are even more pronounced, and we are more unsettled than ever.

I was going to talk about spiritual practices to reduce anxiety, but it seems to me that before we can talk about relieving anxiety, we need to acknowledge where we are at. The world we live in seems to be far from God’s Kingdom and careening off the rails. Things are messed up and we need help. Fortunately, the Hebrew scriptures provide a model for reaching out to God in the midst of turmoil and distress. The psalms are full of the voices of people pouring out anger, frustration and despair to God. “Where are you God?”” How could you let this happen?” “Destroy our enemies.” “Save us.” I think that God wants our honesty and can handle our complicated emotions. It is noteworthy that after the psalmist rants, rages and begs, almost all of the psalms of lament end with praise for God. It seems that after we let go of all that negative energy, we are more spiritually free and in a better position to acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers and to let God be God.

I invite you to open your heart to God and write your own psalm of lament. Here is mine:

Blessed are you LORD God, creator and sustainer of all that is.

We come to you knowing your special concern for the poor and the oppressed, the

migrant, the homeless, the sick and suffering.

We come to you knowing your delight in all that you have created,

the creation that you called “good.”

We come to you as your children, frightened and confused.

We come to you aware of our privilege and obligation to

work towards the establishment of your kingdom.

We have tried LORD.

We are trying; but we are confounded.

Where are you God?

Are you listening to us?

Look at us O God.

Look at our distress and have pity on us.

We are frightened. The pandemic rages around us.

Your children are sick and dying.

You have given us doctors and scientists to help us, but we don’t listen.

Masks and social distancing are viewed as evidence of weakness rather than love.

How can this be?

Where are you God?

Are you listening to us?

Look at us O God.

Look at our distress and have pity on us.

Do you see the fires raging and the storms battering us?

Do you see that this earth and its creatures are in danger?

Do you see how profit is put ahead of care for the earth?

Do you see how science is ignored?

Do you see how care for the earth is being replaced by having more at any cost?

Where are you God?

Are you listening to us?

Look at us O God.

Look at our distress and have pity on us.

Do you see the Proud Boys?

Do you see the swastikas and hate crimes?

Do you see all the black and brown people who are terrified?

Terrified that it is open season on them?

Terrified that in this world Black Lives don’t matter.

Where are you God?

Are you listening to us?

Look at us O God.

Look at our distress and have pity on us.

Do you see the children in cages at the border?

Do you see the little girl in an elementary school hallway being surrounded and

told to go back to Mexico?

Do you see the innocent elementary school children, their views distorted by hate

and fear, chanting: “Build a wall.”

We are frightened for these children and their parents.

We are disappointed that discrimination and hate have become the norm.

Where are you God?

Are you listening to us?

Look at us O God.

Look at our distress and have pity on us.

We are deeply sad that people in authority are still able to demean and assault women

with impunity.

How is it possible that so very many people are willing to turn a blind eye?

How is it possible that these same people say that they are your followers?

Where are you God?

Are you listening to us?

Look at us O God.

Look at our distress and have pity on us.

We are perplexed and bewildered.

We are angry, disappointed and sad.

We are sad that so many people can choose hateful rhetoric

instead of kindness and tolerance.

We are sad that rudeness and bullying are deemed acceptable.

We are sad that our children and grandchildren are exposed to models of

authority that are so opposed to your “sedeq” and “mishpat.”

Where are you God?

Are you listening to us?

We are afraid.

We feel abandoned.

We want to blame all of this on "others:"

-those who choose hate over love,

-those who choose greed over compassion.

Help us to make sense of this.

Help us to recognize how we are complicit in the hate and oppression.

Forgive us for the part we have played.

Help us to choose hope over despair, understanding over judgment,

inclusion over exclusion and compassion over bitterness.

Help us not spread resentment and instead choose integrity,

truth, kindness and love.

Help us to move forward, delighting to do our small parts in bringing forth

your kingdom.

We remember your promises and we praise you for your fidelity.

Even though we feel frightened and alone,

we know that you have not abandoned us

and we praise you for your never-ending

love, mercy and compassion.

We wait in joyful hope for the establishment of your kingdom

- the kingdom of justice and peace.

 Suanne

Looking Glass Connections

“I sought the LORD, and he answered me,

delivered me from all my fears.

Look to him and be radiant,

and your faces may not blush for shame.

This poor one cried out and the LORD heard,

and from all his distress he saved him.

The angel of the LORD encamps

around those who fear him, and he saves them.

Taste and see that the LORD is good;

blessed are those who take refuge in him.”

(Psalm 34: 5-9)

I was in middle school when one morning my father didn’t go to work as he usually did and my mother got up very early to get ready to go somewhere. I remember waking up to her telling me to get up and ready for school. I couldn’t miss the bus that day because they had an appointment. Neither one of my parents told me what was going on, but I knew in the pit of my stomach that something was not right. I worried all day during school and even broke down in tears in the guidance counselor’s office. As it turned out, my father was waiting for me when I got home from school and said, “your mother is in the hospital. She had surgery for bladder cancer and the doctor said he got all the cancer out. Let’s make dinner and then I will take you to see her tonight.” I struggled as my young mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening. All I knew was that I was afraid.

My family was heavily dominated by brothers and my only sister got married and moved away from home when I was six years old. Thoughts of having to survive in an all-male household without my mother was more than I could handle. My mother was the only one who could follow along with my long stories, vivid dreams and crazy aspirations for life. She was fine after that bout with cancer, but it never left our minds even though the doctor said the cancer left her body.

Later in life it was no longer my mother doing the caregiving but me taking care of her. In the last summer of her life she was in a nursing facility and I visited her every day for lunch. It never phased me to make the hour drive through traffic to spend a little bit of time with her. One day, as I was going to my car after our visit, the cloud formations in the sky caught my attention and, in an instant, I was aware of a Divine Presence walking with me. God was watching over both of us as we journeyed closer to that day when she would take her last breath and our relationship would be change forever. In the evening of August 25th, I sat by her bedside and prayed for the Holy Spirit to come and take her. My fears and anxieties were gone as I knew God was present and would care for each of us.

I think back to that time and often remember the challenges St Elizabeth Ann Seton endured in her life.  She faced illness, trauma, loss, and separation from her loved ones just like we have been experiencing in this pandemic.  May we not lose heart and trust in the loving presence of God as we journey through each day often without our loved ones by our side and think of the words of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton,

““God is like a looking glass in which souls see each other. The more we are untied to Him by love, the nearer we are to those who belong to Him.” ”

Let us pray: Loving, healing Father, we know that our fears and anxieties are part of being human. We do not fully understand where our loved ones are since having passed from this life to eternity, but we trust you to care for us and for the souls of our loved ones. Give us courage to move forward and help us to share laughter and tears and know we are not alone as we grieve. Jesus, we trust in you. Amen

- Sandy Monier

(Sandy is a Roman Catholic Pastoral Minister and offers Grief Support to groups and individuals.)

The seedling of my parent’s Rose of Sharon tree, in bloom, on a foggy fall morning.

Racism, Renunciation, and Contemplation

This morning I read Richard Rohr’s daily meditation on the topic “Contemplation and Racism” which takes to task white privilege and puts the ball in the court of the privileged – what do we do next, who are white, who have benefitted from unearned and undeserved ease in this troubled country.  I woke up at one in the morning thinking about this topic, and as I am a believer in and lover of contemplative practice as a stepping stone in creating individual and cultural transformation, I read a chapter of “The Way of the Pilgrim,” a Russian text that details the wanderings of a Pilgrim as he looks to unite himself in prayer with God.

The chapter I read last night was about a prince who, with callous indifference, kills one of his serfs and feels nothing—nothing, until the serf begins to haunt his dreams and then appears to him in visions in his daytime hours.  Along with the man he has killed, the women he treated badly and other men he had wronged begin to haunt him continually.  Nothing helps this sickness until he frees the rest of his serfs and resolves to give away what he has and live his life as a beggar.  He loses the world and regains his soul.

Christian Bobin, in his meditation on Francis of Assisi, The Very Lowly, writes that the moment of St. Francis’s conversion involves letting go of his old life of privilege, a moment of change that he resists “like one of those children who have a marble in their left hand and won’t let go till they have the coins they’re trading it for in their right: you would like to have a new life as long as you don’t lose the old one” (38).  Change is hard.  And a new world, a more fair and just and kind one, means those afforded these unfair privileges must be willing to let go to see what the new one looks like.  The spiritual world, Bobin continues, “is nothing different from the material world.  The world of the spirit is just the material world finally set right.  In the world of the spirit, one makes one’s fortune by going bankrupt” (53).  How different this is from the “Christianity” of the White House, from the prosperity gospel that promises more stuff to those who believe.

In a class I team-taught last semester on “Interfaith Dialogue:  Christianity and Islam,” my faith was confirmed that we can be more loving by listening and letting down our guard.  My students marveled at the similarities between religions—the common emphasis on social justice, personal accountability, and love. Even in difference, by learning to honor those differences, we can live as one.  I think that white America is being asked, person by person, to let go of privilege, of distorted and harmful narratives about what this country is, and in this time of common hurting, where the hurt is still being disproportionately dispersed, we are each called to enter our inner rooms, confront our own complicity, failings, and guilt, and emerge as agents of change.  I believe that contemplation allows us to do this, but contemplation without action does little.

In the 4th Century, Basil the Great wrote of the inequities of his time, “’But whom do I treat unjustly,’ you say, ‘by keeping what is my own?’ Tell me, what is your own?  What did you bring into this life?  From where did you receive it?  It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common.”  Meditating on this question might yield different answers for different people—and beget a call to volunteerism, a vocational change, supporting something greater than our own individual lives.  We have a charge now to work towards change, but losing privilege means being willing to let go of what is extra, for those who live with more to live with less, to live differently.  I am not trying to collapse class and race here, and each individual walks a different path in this world.  I am trying to walk my own, better.  May those of us who have been complicit in this culture of privilege, whether intentionally or not, try to do the same.

- Alison Umminger

Photo by Keith Helfrich on Unsplash

““I think that white America is being asked, person by person, to let go of privilege, of distorted and harmful narratives about what this country is, and in this time of common hurting, where the hurt is still being disproportionately dispersed, we are each called to enter our inner rooms, confront our own complicity, failings, and guilt, and emerge as agents of change. ””