Sunday
Great wisdom traditions are trying to teach us that grief isn’t something from which to run. In fact, we can’t risk getting rid of pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach us.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
If we’re willing to feel and participate in the pain of the world, part of us will suffer that kind of despair. If we want to walk with Jesus, and in solidarity with much of the world, we must allow grace to lead us there as the events of life show themselves.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
It is the lament of the community that leads to healing. All you have are prayers, faith, and courage. Yet, with this alone and the God who never leaves us alone, you must act.
—Barbara A. Holmes
Wednesday
Lament is a demonstrative, strong, and corporate expression of deep grief, pain, sorrow, and regret. Lament and repentance deal with issues of the heart. They pave the way for outer change.
— Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill
Thursday
Grief is not a problem to be solved or a malady to be cured. It’s a sacred reality to be entered.
—Mirabai Starr
Friday
The “weeping mode” allows us to carry the tragic side, to bear the pain of the world without looking for perpetrators or victims. Tears from God are always for everybody, for our universal exile from home.
—Richard Rohr
Week Twenty-Six Practice
Writing a Prayer of Lament
Spiritual director Fran Tilton Shelton guides readers through the practice of writing their own psalm of lament.
In the 150 biblical songs found in the book of Psalms, there are fifty-eight laments. Forty-two are psalms of individual lament, and sixteen are written on behalf of a community or nation. Each lament appeals to God for mercy and assumes a measure of confidence of God’s character and God’s intimate interest in our welfare. Take a look at the psalms or find a passage of scripture from your own tradition that speaks to the pain of loss and the comfort of God.
Writing your own prayer of lament can allow you to put into words all the feelings that you have about your loved one’s death or about a national or global crisis in which many lives are lost. It can help you stay attuned to the feelings of loss and fear and anger rather than become numb to them.
Prepare: Get ready to write your own lament by centering your heart and mind with the following breath prayer or one of your own.
Inhale: God of truth and grace,
Exhale: Encourage me to be honest.
Turn to God: Read Psalm 77:1–3 several times. Then, in your journal or on a piece of paper, write your own turning toward the Divine.
I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that God may hear me…
Complain to God: Read Psalm 13:1–2 and then write your complaint.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?…
Ask God for what you want: Read Psalm 13:3 and write your request.
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death.
Write an affirmation of trust: Read Psalm 13:5 and write your own sense of trust.
But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
Reference:
Fran Tilton Shelton, The Spirituality of Grief: Ten Practices for Those Who Remain (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2023), 121–123. Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version, updated ed.
Image credit and inspiration: Siim Lukka, untitled (detail), 2017, photo, Estonia. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We make room for our personal and collective grief by letting the sorrow burn through.
