For nearly a year now I've been drawn to the concept of lament. I've begun to wonder about what lamenting was all about in the Bible. The processes, the rituals, the circumstances. But more so, the sound of lament. The sound of the words whispered, those sung, those spoken, or cried out in one critical moment that perhaps turned into many. The sound of anguished pleas directed at a God known for being the way out of painful circumstances. A God of many names, but unmistakably the one, true and living God.
Yes, as for so many other folks, I’m sure, the events of 2020 called me to reflection and in doing so, I rediscovered what I heard my saved, sanctified, God-trusting matriarchs do, or talk about doing all my life. Lament. Collective lament is a powerful force of words and posture that yields powerful results of clarity through solidarity. This is a call to humanity for today. And it is a beautiful call.
What I love about lament is that it seems that it can be both spontaneous and, pre-planned. Biblically, lament often occurred at a specific time understood by all and sent out in decrees across the land from the leader of the time. At other times lament seemed to spring out of the woundedness of a single heart and offered up with words and cries composed in a moment; beautiful and ragged at the same. My lament this evening is that type of spontaneity. I’ve composed it in my heart, right now, as I’m writing, feeling, and hearing my pain. My lament is "Selma, Lord, Selma".
This refrain of many black experiences probably won't ring a bell for many, but it’s the title of a 1999 movie about the Bloody Sunday event, (different than the subject of the U2 song) told through the eyes of a little girl. The attempted coup that took place at our nation’s Capitol, the event that marked the first week of 2021, a year most widely anticipated, didn't happen in Selma, Alabama. I know that. I could cry out America, Lord, America... but it just doesn't have the black, southern female, heavy-sighing lilt of my ancestors, that I need in my ears and in my heart, right now. It doesn’t have that sound.
The crushing grief of Bloody Sunday in Selma is the same as that of the violence and devastation of Black Wall Street, or the rides, destruction, lynching and murders of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century south. And the insurrection of Jan 6, 2021… It’s all one, long, grief-stricken, wailing, heart-ripping, fist-pounding internal lament, that comes out in that heavily burdened and bereaved sigh of black women, heads shaking, lips making that familiar tsk, tsk sound, "Selma, Lord....Selma".
The events at the "People's" House that made the start of 2021 feel like trash, makes me feel like that helpless 11-year-old girl who saw and understood the times so clearly but was powerless in her youth, to act. I'm surmising that I resonate with her because of the intersection of my female, black, and Christian social identities. Navigating the depth and width of all that is happening at the crossroads of that intersection, is a bit confusing, a lot sobering, and almost nearly heartbreaking.
This is a sackcloth and ashes kind of reality for me that cries Maranatha! It feels like the sound of a lament. I am unapologetically Christian and yet, I hate what the face of Christianity looks like. I am decidedly female and burdened with the misogynistic implications of Women for Trump, women who, bent under the oppressive weight of white, male patriarchy, visit their anguish on women of color in the workplace. I am unmistakably black. I bear the full understanding of what the Capitol steps looked like crowded with national police when there was a planned protest by the BLM movement. I l dwell the lives injured and lost in the outcries of the summer of 2020, protesting that very thing; black lives being snuffed out without care or consequence. I ponder the crippling lunacy of Trump supporters still willing to take up a stand for a false truth and the wrong side of humanity, at the direct cost of black equity, black access, and most wickedly, black lives.
We need a national lament. Right now. Whiteness that causes our nation’s leaders to keep calling for unity we've never had, healing we've never experienced, and some sort of higher goodness we’ve never exhibited is lament worthy. Their speeches, replaying as if on automatic with the phrase, "This isn't who we are", sound deceptively contrived and nationally sinful. America should try it the Children of Israel way, just this once, and see what might happen. Might we glean from the sound of the words and brokenness of posture in national lament?
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about a democracy trying to be a theocracy, although that might seem to be my call. I'm affirming the largeness of the concept of lament. A spiritual concept being exploded out to the oneness of humanity. Solidarity in a practice that calls everyone corporately, to their own personal deity. The idea that our nation can stop in its tracks under the call of one leader, and just be still. Be quiet. listen. and when the lament is composed, grasp it. Embrace it. Repeat it together, again and again, in new and true unity and real reflection.
Where's the true Church that calls, convenes, and collectively comforts? Who’s that person that Heaven has chosen for such a time as this, to lead us into lament? Where’s that small voice that was once unknown bursting onto the nation’s scene, newly minted for the fight ahead? The nation needs you, right now. I need you right now.
I'm trying to place all of today's anguish and uncertainty somewhere that isn't the center of my gut, where human despair has been known to collect. I don't want to die of stress-induced cancer. And I don't want humanity to keep dying of race-induced division. I invite you to join me in the song of my matriarchs, the beauty of the words, the sound of the cry, and the possibilities of a broken posture. Let's start in Lament.
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