The Transforming Power of Love
April 16–April 21, 2023
Sunday
The prophets warn us, and too few listen; when the inevitable consequences come, the prophets invite us not to let our opportunity pass by without being named, mourned, and lamented. —Brian McLaren
Monday
Lamentation prayer is when we sit and speak out to God and one another—stunned, sad, and silenced by the tragedy and absurdity of human events. It might actually be the most honest form of prayer. —Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Jesus wept, / and in his weeping, / he joined himself forever / to those who mourn.... / He stands with the mourners, / for his name is God-with-us.
—Ann Weems
Wednesday
Lament is not despair. It is not whining. It is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world’s deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace.
—Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice
Thursday
When we go to the place of tears, it’s an inner attitude where when I can’t fix it, when I can’t explain it, when I can’t control it, when I can’t even understand it, I can only forgive it. Let go of it, weep over it. It’s a different mode of being.
—Richard Rohr
Friday
Therein lies the power of lament: to speak the truth that all is not well. Lament is prophetic speech. It bears faithful witness to all that is not right with the world and to all that is not right with ourselves. —Andi Lloyd
Week Sixteen Practice
Weep for the World
We invite readers to listen and lament with the song Weep for the World, written and performed by Brian McLaren to express our human desire to both grieve and heal from the harm we have caused.
Let us weep for the world
being broken apart
by humans,
foolish humans.
Let us grieve the desecration
of forest and stream,
of glacier and ocean and humans,
like us.
Let us be mindful of the children,
being born today,
in a world torn apart
by humans.
Let us show our children
a more excellent way
to walk on the earth and be human,
truly human.
Let us love this world
we’ve been breaking apart
and let our love bring wholeness.
And let us love one another
with a compassionate heart
for it is love that makes us human, human.
Let us weep for the world
We are breaking apart,
so we can love it back
to wholeness.
Let our hearts be stretched
by great sorrow and love,
so they will never contract
to being less than human.
The Weeping Mode
Through studying Francis of Assisi, Richard Rohr learned that weeping is a mode of being that relinquishes any need to be in control:
When I was a Franciscan novice in 1961, I only went to my novice master once with a complaint. Every month, we had been encouraged to read another life of Saint Francis. I kept reading about Francis going off into a cave and crying. These books said he spent whole days in tears, weeping. Frankly, this made no sense to me, so I went to my novice master. I said, “What’s he crying about all the time? I don’t get it. I don’t know if I want to be a Franciscan.” My educated, rational mind already resisted that kind of losing, weakness, vulnerability. My novice master told me, “You won’t understand it now, but I promise you will later.”
The mode of weeping, of crying, is different than the mode of fixing. It’s different than understanding. That’s why we often cry when we forgive. I’ve given up trying to make rhyme or reason or blame or who’s right or who’s wrong. The dualistic mind just goes back and forth seeking justification, seeking the right reason to hate or reject another person. We never find home base. Now I understand why Francis wept so much. When we go to the place of tears, and I don’t mean necessarily literally—I still don’t cry very easily myself, I’m sad to say—it’s an inner attitude where when I can’t fix it, when I can’t explain it, when I can’t control it, when I can’t even understand it, I can only forgive it. Let go of it, weep over it. It’s a different mode of being. [1]
After her father’s death, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie captures the embodied experience of “the weeping mode,” in which no attempts to “fix” or “move on” will do:
Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. Why are my sides so sore and achy? It’s from crying, I’m told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue is unbearably bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart—my actual, physical heart, nothing figurative here—is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odds with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable. For weeks, my stomach is in turmoil, tense and tight with foreboding, the ever-present certainty that somebody else will die, that more will be lost. [2]
References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Art of Letting Go: Living the Wisdom of Saint Francis (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2010). Available as CD.
[2] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021), 6–7.
4. Prayer
A Prayer of Lament:
Lord, I know that you are faithful over all things, even the hard, dark times of my life. Help me not back away from you in my time of grief. Help me instead to lean into you and trust you, even when I do not understand your ways. Please keep my head above the waters of anguish and my feet from slipping off the ground of truth. Help me see you in these hard moments and glorify you in my response. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
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