Greetings in the Name of the Lord!
One of the things that I want to do during Lent this year is to take some time to actively practice lament. In our current world, lament is something that tends to get ignored, the world tells us we have to be happy all the time, cheerful, that if we are sad or there is something that we miss or we mourn, that there is something wrong with us. I have to imagine that this cultural instinct came from a place of hope, as a way to try and prevent a descent into depression, but as many things in our current world, most have taken it so far that there is little room left for other emotions. This is problematic because when we bury emotions or try to suppress them, or ignore them, they tend to turn back up in ways that are usually inappropriate and/or inconvenient.
As a culture, one of the things we have not fully dealt with is the lasting losses of COVID, we are not finding ways to lament what was lost. It has been roughly six years since we were first sent into isolation, and although there were some good things that came out of that time, for many it was very difficult. The hardest time for me was the fall and winter of 2020, before vaccines started to become available, and there would be brief moments of being able to come out of hiding, only for things to get worse and be forced back inside. I had recently started at a new congregation, and was unable to really visit anyone or get to know them in community. At the same time, I was making sure my kindergartener and preschooler were getting to online classes, and learning to read and getting their speech therapy in. It was also not too long after my divorce, and I was still struggling with many of the emotions that would have been a lot without the world seemingly falling apart at the seams.
We are now somewhere between 4-5 years beyond the worst of it, but the scars still remain. There is still anxiety that lingers and we are in a far different world now than the one of January 2020. IT is hard to heal the wounds the pandemic created without taking time to mourn some of those losses and intentionally engage in lament.
During worship throughout the five Sundays of lent, we will be formally offering lament around what was lost during the pandemic. I will also use this space each week to talk a little bit about what specific things we will offer up in lament for worship the upcoming Sunday.
For this Sunday, our reading deals with wilderness, and it reflects the times in our lives that held uncertainty, or when we felt lost or deeply disoriented. While in the wilderness with Christ this Sunday, we will reflect on the disorientation that grew during the pandemic, and lament what that feeling brought with it. More specifically we will look at:
the loss of a true sense of time, everything seemed to blur together. Even today I have a hard time remembering exactly when things happened during the years of and immediately following the pandemic.
the loss of presumed safety, suddenly leaving the house could mean getting sick, it was impossible to know what would happen if one got sick.
the loss of public places that acted as anchors in our social life, and even when we could start returning to places like coffee shops or churches, we had to move through quickly, maintain distance, it felt foreign and unknown.
the loss of silence as a resource for finding one's center. The immensity of the silence isolation brought was overwhelming, and instead of the comfort silence and stillness can bring, it made us fearful of silence and stillness. We found effective ways to retreat from the silence, and into social media or music, or movies, or just about anything that could distract us from the vastness of our loneliness.
I know just writing this raised my own anxiety and brought back some feelings from those times, and it does not feel great to feel those again. The same may have happened for you, but we need to feel those feelings, we need to take a few breaths and acknowledge the way those feelings have not left us, and still haunt us. It is okay, I'd say even good, to let yourself cry over how hard those times were, particularly now that we are fully on the other side of that isolation. Engaging those feelings for a little while (we don't need to dwell on them longer than 15-20 mins though), engaging them is important for ultimately separating ourselves from the anxieties of those days and to help us recognize, within our bodies, that we no longer face many of those realities, and that we can gently let go of the protections that got us through those challenging times. We can also be intentional about finding ways to bring back centering silence, to find ways to ensure public spaces become anchors again, to find ways to reestablish time in meaningful ways, to find ways to re-establish what safety can look like.
Each week we will look at a different theme, and we will talk about some of the things that we need to lament and let go of, so we can prepare ourselves for the new realities we are already moving into. We can do this together, as a community of faith, and we can support one another. In fact, if reading through this was difficult for you, call a friend, or loved one right now, and talk to them about this, feel it together with someone, and know that you are not alone. And join us on Sunday, and take time to be intentional about knowing that you are never alone, God is always with you, even in the midst of lament and mourning.
In Peace,
Mike