{"id":22319,"date":"2023-04-16T09:25:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-16T13:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22319"},"modified":"2023-04-17T10:25:13","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T14:25:13","slug":"22319","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22319","title":{"rendered":"Public Lament"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Casting Crowns - Desert Road (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QSyQYnrpEv8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>How lonely sits the city, that once was full of people\u2026. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks. \u2014Lamentations 1:1, 2&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Psalms and the books of the Hebrew prophets honor the deep, public grief of lamentation as holy prayer. Brian McLaren reflects on Jeremiah\u2019s prophetic message and our need to lament today:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The work of prophets is to warn, to warn people of the inevitable consequences of their foolish or immoral actions. <strong>It will be the end of the world as you know it, the prophets say, unless you rethink your current assumptions, values, and priorities, unless you become ready to change your way of life. Usually, the people don\u2019t listen.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeremiah lived long enough to see the result in 586 [BCE]. And it caused him to write this poem of public lament. Why is public lament so important? Well, imagine you\u2019re a Hebrew slave in Babylon. Whenever you think of what you\u2019ve lost, you weep. Your tears keep alive the folly of your people in not listening to the prophet\u2019s warnings. Your tears keep alive your rage against the cruelty and domination of the Babylonians. Your tears keep alive a desire for change to regain your freedom, to return some day to your homeland. <strong>Guess who doesn\u2019t want you to feel that grief? Guess who wants you to accept your new reality and surrender to it forever? Guess who wants you to put on a happy face in public? Guess who wants to defeat you into emotional numbness rather than emotional aliveness? Your oppressors, those who profit from your compliance, those who want you to be happy and well-adjusted drones in their system. They don\u2019t want you to feel your own pain.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Think of the prophets of recent decades: Rachel Carson warning of a silent spring, Dr. King warning of America\u2019s unpaid promissory note coming due, C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez calling us to stop oppressing and exploiting farmworkers, Pope Francis warning us to hear the cries of the earth and the cries of the poor, Bishop Gene Robinson calling us to see every LGBTQ+ person as God\u2019s beloved child, Dr. William Barber warning us that our national heart needs a moral defibrillator to shock us out of our coma, and Greta Thunberg warning us that the earth is on fire. The prophets warn us, and too few listen; <strong>when the inevitable consequences come, the prophets invite us not to let our opportunity pass by without being named, mourned, and lamented.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Father Richard often defines contemplation as meeting all the reality we can bear. To help us meet and bear reality, the prophets say, mourn privately and lament publicly.\u2026 <strong>Feel the surge of divine grief, the groaning of the Holy Spirit deep within you, and let those groans of loss become the groans of labor so a better world can be born from our failure, beginning with a better you who is still capable of seeing, and feeling, and meeting all the reality we can bear.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Complaining to God<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I live \/ in the open mindedness \/ of not knowing enough \/ about anything. \/&nbsp;<br>It was beautiful.\u2026 \/ How quietly, \/ and not with any assignment from us, \/&nbsp;<br>or even a small hint of understanding, \/ everything that needs to be done \/&nbsp;<br>is done. \u2014Mary Oliver, \u201cLuna\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard Rohr considers lamentation\u2019s spiritual power:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is one strong form of biblical prayer that has been almost completely overlooked by the Christian tradition, maybe because <strong>it feels more like&nbsp;<em>pre-prayer<\/em>&nbsp;than what we usually think of as prayer at all.<\/strong> Let\u2019s call it lamentation or grief work, and it is almost perfectly described in the Mary Oliver epigraph above.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lamentation prayer is when we sit and speak out to God and one another\u2014stunned, sad, and silenced by the tragedy and absurdity of human events. It might actually be the most honest form of prayer. It takes great trust and patience &#8230; so I think it is actually profound prayer, but<strong> most of us have not been told that we could, or even should, \u201ccomplain\u201d to God. I suspect we&nbsp;<em>must<\/em>complain like Job, Judith, and Jeremiah, or we do not even know what to pray for\u2014or how to pray. Or we do not suffer the necessary pain of this world, the necessary sadness of being human.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About one-third of the Psalms are psalms of \u201clament,\u201d but they have been the least used in Catholic and Protestant liturgies. We think, perhaps, they express sinful anger or negativity, when grief and loss are actually something quite different. We think they make us appear weak, helpless, and vulnerable, and most of us don\u2019t want to go there.<strong> We think, perhaps, they show a lack of faith, whereas they are probably the summit of faith. <\/strong>So we quickly <strong>resort to praise and thanksgiving, even when it is often dishonest emotion<\/strong>. We forget that Jesus called weeping a \u201cblessed\u201d state (Matthew 5:4). We forget that only one book of the Bible is named after an emotion: Jeremiah\u2019s book of \u201cLamentations.\u201d [1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Peace activist John Dear asks what Jesus\u2019 teaching \u201cBlessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted\u201d might mean for us in times of global injustice:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBlessed are those who mourn,\u201d Jesus [says]. Millions of people in our world mourn because their loved ones have been killed by war, starvation, or injustice. Do we grieve for those who die in war? For those incinerated by nuclear weapons and bombs? For the [many thousands] who die each day from starvation? Do we allow the sorrow of the world\u2019s poor to touch our hearts? Do we look the suffering of the world in the eye \u2026 or do we turn away in denial and thus postpone our own inevitable confrontation with grief? <strong>Jesus promises that, as we mourn the death of our sisters and brothers around the world, God consoles us, and we find a peace\u2014even a joy that we did not know possible. <\/strong>[2]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-3-500x282.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-22330\" width=\"841\" height=\"474\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-3-500x282.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-3-300x169.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-3-768x433.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-3-1536x865.png 1536w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/image-3-2048x1154.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 841px) 100vw, 841px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h1>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Do Not Worry<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><sup>22\u00a0<\/sup>Then Jesus said to his disciples:\u00a0\u201cTherefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.\u00a0<sup>23\u00a0<\/sup>For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.\u00a0<sup>24\u00a0<\/sup>Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them.\u00a0And how much more valuable you are than birds!\u00a0<sup>25\u00a0<\/sup>Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life<sup>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Luke%2012%3A22-25&amp;version=NIV#fen-NIV-25485a\">a<\/a>]<\/sup>?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1 Peter 5:7 In-Context<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, \u201cGod opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.\u201d 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God&#8217;s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7\u00a0<strong>Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>20\u00a0<\/sup>All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.\u00a0<sup>21\u00a0<\/sup>Who knows if the human spirit rises upward\u00a0and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Ecclesiastes%203&amp;version=NIV\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How lonely sits the city, that once was full of people\u2026. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks. \u2014Lamentations 1:1, 2&nbsp; The Psalms and the books of the Hebrew prophets honor the deep, public grief of lamentation as holy prayer. Brian McLaren reflects on Jeremiah\u2019s prophetic message and our need to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22319"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22319"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22333,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22319\/revisions\/22333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}