WorshipArts January-February 2014

Dramatists, All worship planners

Contemporary psalms of lament

Written by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, a poet, composer and the pastor of St. Matthew’s UMC in Acton, MA. He writes

Unfolding Light, a daily reflection at www.unfoldinglight.net.

Here are contemporary psalms of lament, along with suggestions for how they might be used in worship.

I come to you weak

God, I come to you weak and empty; my prayers are thin and dry.

My heart is hardly awake, nodding off , my mind, divided and wandering.

I bring you my feeble, wayward prayers, my wishes, tangled in fears.

And you receive them as treasured giſt s,

as if they are perfect and whole.

Beloved, your presence is all that I seek, your presence alone my delight.

O Steadfast One, my faith is fragile some days, some days so easily traded

for quick, simple answers, or cheap assurance, or even the sleep of not caring.

And you receive me as your beloved child, and hold me in strong, tender arms.

Beloved, your presence is all that I seek, your presence alone my delight.

O Mystery, some days it just is too much, too taxing to follow you well, too hard to listen for your voice, and to hear,

too far beyond me to obey.

And yet this cry in me, my very despair— is your voice, your aching for me,

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your closing your hand about mine, weak and trembling,

How could this be, this one that I love, torn away, but still in their body? T eir life is hollowed out, an empty, debris-cluttered house that haunts me.

Why, O Loving One, why do you not speak?

January-February 2014 • WorshipArts • www.UMFellowship.org your spirit embracing my own.

Beloved, your presence is all that I seek, your presence alone my delight.

My Lord, I do not know how to love, but yours is the love that will save me.

I do not know how to pray at all, but I can sit in the light, and let your light enfold me and hold me,

my gracious and tender God.

Beloved, your presence is all that I seek, your presence alone my delight.

On “I come to you weak,” one per- son reads all but the last line of each stanza. (Or the stanzas may be di- vided among readers, one for each stanza.) A second person reads the last couplet (“Beloved, your pres- ence...”) that is repeated at the end of each stanza. T e second voice suggests the ambiguity that “Your presence I seek” may be the person’s prayer, or it may be God’s response. Or both. Which is the point.

A lament for mental illness

God of mercy, someone that I love has been taken away

inside themselves, a dear one, lost in thickets of a tangled mind,

engulfed so deep in a broken heart, slowly disappearing without reason or memory.

I know the person I loved is still in there,

beautiful, noble and dear. I look in those eyes to see a way in, to see a way out, and there is none.

How awkward my grief, to lose them so gradually,

how deep my sorrow, to lose them this way.

I want to help, but cannot. My love is rebuff ed,

my wisdom is useless, my sense entirely fails me.

How can you let this happen? How can they not be saved? How can there not be a way?

I search your mind. It is as opaque as theirs.

What can I do, then, patient God? I place them in your care, and myself as well,

for to you no one is lost, no one far. You love what we cannot see. You are present where we do not know.

Now I know, O God, how you feel for all your children,

lost and so slow to come home. Bless us and keep us. Today may we be with you in paradise.

T is is best read just straight out, by a single reader, perhaps out of sight.

Why is there no mercy?

God of mercy, why is there no mercy? T e poor are robbed and the rich grow wealthy,

while hungry children wait in empty kitchens.

Prisoners, caged and alone, so alone, in their cells,

long for the hand that could reach them.

Refugees walk in their long lines toward you

and never arrive, never fi nd home. T e laborer used, the child abused, wait

for no announcing angel, no welcome rescue.

T e lonely and condemned weep without answer.

God of justice, why is there no justice? Living Word, why your silence? Exiled by race, enslaved by greed, your children cry to you.

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