Dust

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“…God comes to your window,
all brighht light and black wings,
and you’re too tired to open it.”
                                  From ”Dust” by Dorianne Laux

That poem, “Dust,”
captures perfectly a number
of dreams
and AH HA! moments
I have had just before turning around
and going on about my business.
Business as usual.

We are dust
and to dust we shall return.

It is not always clear to me
why an excerpt from the Hebrew text
is paired with a particular Gospel story,
but this week is loud and clear.

Jeremiah’s lament —
that long grievous whine —
is exactly what those 12 disciples
would be doing after Jesus’ severe and jealous rant.

”What now?” they might start out,
kind of feigning cognitive difficulty.

“You want us to do what?”
”You’ve come to do what?”
”Love who more than who?”
”Lose what, my life, for what?”

Then they would go home
and let loose
a lament
as big as a cloud
as loud as a wave.
They’d be quoting Jeremiah
jot and tittle.

There are sixty lament psalms.
I read that, never actually counted them.
And there are myriad prophets,
like Jeremiah and Jesus,
who lament with the best of them.

Lamenting is a thing in the Bible
and it ought to be a thing among us too,
if it isn’t already.

To lament like Jeremiah
in that reading from today,
we have to be all-in
in whatever arena we are dancing.
We have to care
like there is no tomorrow
and be as passionate about
what we are lamenting
as we are about our own lives.

It’s not a little complaint
or heady, academic critique.
It is a guttural
wail of an objection
and deep down to our toes
protest.

A lament
points to the wrongness
of the uneven playing field
God has created,
and the pain and suffering
lapping our lives on both sides
in the hazardous existence we walk.
We didn’t get to choose
how or where or to whom we were born,
we didn’t get to choose
the quality of our body or mind,
and we didn’t get to choose
when and where the sky is falling.

In fact, we didn’t get to choose
an alternative to a finite existence
that ends whether or not we want it to.

And within all of that existential
consternation,
the lament can turn
and hammer specific wrongs
that God seems to have created
or allowed to happen.
These ancient lamenters are not punks.
They are not philosophers
waxing and waning about ideas about God.
They are shaking their fists at God —
the Creator of all that is.
And here is a thing:
they don’t disbelieve in God

just because God
doesn’t sooth their sore shoulders
with lotion, or fix
their physical, emotional,
spiritual, or moral crises.

They don’t disbelieve, they lament.
”What in God’s name is wrong with you, God?”
”What kind of bleep’n bleepidy bleep, bleep you got going on here, God?

They don’t question God’s existence
they question God’s judgment — God’s
actions and decision.

They question their own sanity
for getting involved with God in the first place.
”What am I doing here?
What am I doing
working on this crazy, no good
ridiculous stuff
for this God that isn’t helping me
and certainly not turning things around.
In fact, I am worse off now
than before I got involved.
I need my head examined.”

You know, there was a time
in yesteryear,
when I was so angry with God
I thought I was an atheist.
Not even an agnostic
but an atheist.
I didn’t even know
how angry I was
or that I was angry at God.

Looking back on it
it seems kind of silly
and petulant — embarrassing
really — that I was so angry
given the level of privilege
I had as a white heterosexual male
born into a middle class American household
where I was loved
even if not the way I wanted
to be loved.
But that is the thing about a lament,
it is deeply human.
No one else
gets to judge
or even know
the depth of our personal pain
or sorrow
or grief.
It isn’t measurable
or quantifiable
or comparable
or justifiable or unjustifiable.
We fall into this experience
of being human
and being human with the people
we are given
to be human with.
And we each have raw wounds
from some of that experience —
wounds inflicted upon us,
and wounds that are self-inflicted,
but it doesn’t matter which
because they are still painful.

And so we have a lament inside
aimed at God
for some particular pain
we have that is ours
and ours alone.
Our pain.
Our struggle.
Our particular challenge.
Our personal grief or sorrow or anger.

I do not care who you are
or how mature you are
or how self-differentiated you may be.
You have a lament inside
and even if your rational mind
won’t allow you to go there —
it is aimed at God.
It is gilded with blame
and aimed like a howitzer
at The One
who created all of this
and who knows you
and your pain
just like That One knows
how many feathers are left
on sparrow
at your feeder.

That’s a lot of metaphor
and I do not know
how much God knows
about any of this territory we walk
as human beings,
but I do know that a lament
holds God accountable.

As a part of our spiritual practice,
laments are valuable.
Being in touch
with the laments we have inside
will enliven our relationship with God.
And getting in touch
with laments we have ignored
or denied
will enliven that relationship as well.

It is important to note,
that many, if not most of the Biblical laments,
somewhere turn on a dime
and end in gratitude.

The begin with a fist shaking
and blame escaping
and end with a “Thank You
I appreciate the gifts you have given me.”

Laments are honest that way.
We hold both at the same time —
blame and anger
with awe and gratitude.
Blame and anger
raise the temperature of our investment
while awe and gratitude cool it to warmth.

So that is lament, a real category of spirituality
we almost never talk about.

I highly encourage
shaking our fists at God
when the stakes are high
and our ignorance is blinding
and then, eventually,
embracing our cosmic ignorance
with a grinning “Thank you.”

Now, as for Jesus’ blistering rant
in the Gospel of Matthew,
I haven’t got a clue.
Honestly, I could take it apart
and contextualize it
and add a little sweetener
to make it go down better,
but why do that?

I think it is great just as it is:
tough talk about how hard it is
to create the kingdom of God on earth
as it is in heaven.
So I commend Matthew’s Jesus speech
to you just like it is,
for a little personal contemplation.
And if you do that,
it may just get you in touch
with a lament or two.

I’ll leave the tough talk from Jesus with this:
“Someone spoke to (us) last night,
told (us) the truth. Just a few words,
but (we) recognized it.”
Whether we open the window or not
is up to us —
a moment by moment
decision.