A song of lament

As our siblings (and some of you) are wading through the waters and waste left behind by Helene and Milton, I am drawn to a poem of lament of another city laid to waste 2500 years ago. In 597 BCE, the great empire of Babylon invaded Jerusalem, destroying the temple and taking into captivity a large portion of its population. The remnant left behind are said to have chanted their lament as they tore down the vestiges of their great city and grieved the people and places lost to them forever. This song of sorrow is recorded in the Old Testament as the book of Lamentations. 

How lonely sits the city
that once was full of people!
…

She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks
.….

The roads to Zion mourn,
for no one comes to the festivals;
all her gates are desolate;
her priests groan;
her young girls grieve,
and her lot is bitter.

~Excerpts from Lamentations 1

This book has captured the imaginations of readers throughout the centuries for its vivid imagery and poetic form. The first four chapters of Lamentations are written as acrostic poems, each stanza beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in order from א to ת. Scholars have speculated about why the author of Lamentations (probably Jeremiah) would choose such a structured format when writing about something as unstructured and chaotic as grief. 

But is there not something powerful in creating order from chaos, beauty from pain, art from experience? Some scholars believe that this acrostic form was meant to speak to the all-encompassing (A to Z) nature of grief that the Israelite people experienced. Others point to the sentiment that grief should be fully felt and then laid to rest. 

I believe there is healing in putting form to grief. For as long as human beings have been on this earth, we have found solace in song and rhythm. Warriors march to a drumbeat, workers chant their labor rhythms, and we sing our loved ones into death. Our Scriptures are filled with this music, encompassing the breadth of the human experience. Its words and rhythms help us process our deepest sorrows and despairs, especially when we join our voices with others. 

Legend has it that the Israelites sang Lamentations as they tore down their city, embodying their grief in their voices and through their labor. Often, we must fully embrace the grief in order to make space for what’s to come. The people of Jerusalem had to tear down the remnants of their city in order to lay new foundations for a new city. 

The cries of the people in Lamentations are not so different from our own as we face the devastating destruction of natural disasters. May we find solace in fully immersing ourselves in the grief shared across generations and experiences, looking to our God who has seen humanity through our worst days, always offering us the hope of a new day as we join together and rebuild.