Retrieve Lament, Day 4 (art meditations + suggested resources for Lent 2013)
"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent. Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned.
the lament that we omitted."That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve
(Ranier Maria Rilke, from Requiem For A Friend)
During Lent I'll share almost-daily meditations of Scripture, hymns, and art reflecting this time of tension between dying and birth.
Won't you join me?
February 16 , Day 4
Psalm 32
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
While I kept silence, my body wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
Selah
Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’,
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
Selah
Therefore let all who are faithful
offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters
shall not reach them.
You are a hiding-place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.
Selah
I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle,
else it will not stay near you.
Many are the torments of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
A Song of Response:
Visual meditation:
Grid of Beauty, Sublimity and Grotesquery
Matthew Whitney
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Suggested Resources for Lent:
- Lenten Daily Devotional from Christ Church of Austin, 2013
- Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter
- Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, Bobby Gross
Now it's your turn! What art are you enjoying this season?
"Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east." (Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland)