Our congregation is practicing lament this Lent. Our pastor (who also happens to be my good husband, Brian) recognized that all of us are carrying the weight of accumulated loss and needing to learn how lament is both an act of worship and a gift for our own souls. We’re also reading W. David O. Taylor’s excellent book Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life which points us toward the Psalmist as our model for expressing the full range of human emotion in the presence of God.
I feel compelled to look deeply into lament, beyond my preconceived notions, to grow in my understanding of lament as more than an idea but an expansive and healing language we’ve been given by our Creator. The language that Christ, in the words of the poet Rilke, came to retrieve. Like any language, we can learn just the bare minimum for survival or we can immerse ourselves in its full expression.
If lament is a forgotten language for most of us, how have we been expressing our sadness, anger, and grief, and depression up to now?
Walk with me through Lent one of two ways (or both!)
Subscribe to a Daybook Meditations membership to follow along with the daily meditations online.
Donate and request the Lent Daybook 2021 as a one-time download. Keep reading to see how using this option will help folks in Austin right now.
