If my travels are any indication, lamentation is not a familiar term for many of our UU kinfolk. Or at least it wasn’t until these days of off-the-charts anxiety, disorientation and loss.
As I write, I’m on lunch break during the Southeast chapter of the UUMA (Unitarian Universalist Ministers’ Association) online fall retreat. The mood is overall heavy as we share the valleys and mountains of ministry during Covid. Most of us have been in just-hang-in-there mode for nearly eight months now, and it’s starting to show in our lives and ministries.
But even more nurturing than spending time with colleagues, is our shared
lamentations. We’re lamenting not being physically present with and to our
parishioners’. We’re lamenting the state of our nation. We’re lamenting the many losses in our own lives, and those of our loved ones
I offer these thoughts because, as a dear colleague reminded us in today’s worship service, lamentation – especially in the Jewish tradition – is more than a ritual or one-off. It’s a state of mind, body and spirit. It’s the deep grief work that comes with being alive to our own spirits.
All of which is to invite you into some lamentation of your own, good folk of UUFH. What have you, your circles of beloveds, your nation and world lost in these days? Can you name them, feel them, honor them and maybe even release them? Stay with them, even if they weigh you down?
To be honest, I have more such questions than answers. I’m betting that’s so for many if not most of you, too. So let me close these thoughts by returning to this morning’s worship service, specifically a reading from UU minister and writer, Lynn Ungar. Titled “These Days”, it’s my new favorite prayer of lamentation. Maybe yours, too.
Anyone who tells you not to be afraid should have their head examined.
Cities are burning, hillsides are burning, and the dumpster fire of our common life is out of control.
I wish I could tell you when it was going to get better.
I wish I could promise that better was anywhere down this road.
I miss dancing, bodies in something between conversation and flight.
I miss singing, the way we trusted the air that moved between us.
I miss the casual assumption that everything would be all right in the morning.
These days I am trying to be buoyed by the smallest things— a ripe tomato, a smattering of rain.
These days I am trying to remember that songs of lamentation are still songs.