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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Monday, April 17, 2023

Time for Lament

 

“We have become a place of long weeping

A house of scattered feathers

There is no home for us between earth and sky.

                     From Collected Lamentations from the Night of Knives” 

                     Rebecca Roanhorse

 

How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!

How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations!

                     Lamentations 1:1

____________________________________

 

my heart screams

“it is time for lament”

 

it is time to cover ourselves with ashes

and enter that place of “long-weeping”

 

we must lament

before we can repent

we must lament

before we can change

we must lament before we can move to praise and thanksgiving

 

without lament, hope cannot truly come

 

it is time to lament

our culture of guns and violence

where children are slaughtered in our schools

and young boys are shot in the head for ringing a doorbell

 

it is time to lament

the lies told so easily

poured forth by politicians who have no shame

 

it is time to lament

greed and graft

tolerated and even celebrated

graft seated in the highest court of the land

 

it is time to lament

the death of justice for political expediency

the embrace of authoritarianism

the oppression and suppression practiced with impunity

in the land of right-wing supermajorities

 

it is time to lament inequity

that the top 10% in America hold 76% of the wealth

and the bottom 50% hold 1% of our wealth

 

it is time to lament the peril faced by

people who are BIPOC

who are LGBTQI+

who are mentally ill

who are addicted

as they are demonized, marginalized, and minimized

 

time to cry, especially, for our trans youth

whose very existence is being denied

 

it is time to lament a political party

built on fear and hate, lies, ignorance, suppression, and oppression

to lament that the news is not news but propaganda

 

it is a time to lament a church

that has chosen to walk a path far different from that of Jesus

and has sided with the way of dominance rather than servanthood

the way of ascension rather than the way of kenosis

 

lament is painful

it is a cry of the heart

 

but unless our hearts weep for what is wrong

unless we are willing to see what is wrong

we cannot turn toward what is right

we cannot turn toward Sacred

 

unless we lament we will not change

 

it is time for lament

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