To Lament
Seek
November 11, 2014
voices from the
Episcopal Diocese of Missouri
Eliza Lynn writes on psalms of lament, clouds of grief, ancient prayer, and hearing Jesus through the blues. The word “lament” used to feel like surprisingly, musical. an antiquated word. The connotations in I sang songs I had my mind were of ancient biblical people written years ago and whose lives I couldn’t quite settle into. blues I had learned Maybe it was the translation and the rewhile living in NC – maining highfalutin lilt still echoing from but now I sang them the KJV, but I never really identified with for real. It’s not that the psalms of lament and veered away I didn’t mean them from the Book of Lamentations. before, but now they Paul Gauguin, 1848 - 1903, Human Sorrow (Miseres humaines), What I did do was write music at were the very thing Medium woodcut on japan paper, Rosenwald Collection of the National Gallery of Art a specific emotional juncture: I make that contextualized up songs when I feel torn in two. my life which time I had taken two graduate theThe songs somehow sew me back experience. ology courses at Aquinas Institute. I was “American blues together in their making. I am My songs “Hard to let explaining my process of healing through as contemporary brought to a place internally where it hurt,” “Weary,” and “Pullmusic to Fr. Harry Byrne, OP and he said lamentations.” I have nothing to lose and I’m willing of tides” were on such the phrase, “American blues as contempoing to let go and follow the sounds constant repeat on my guirary lamentations.” Thus began my directhat come. In the process, I am mended. tar and banjo, I figured my new neighbors tion of study. Last summer I was reeling from the would think those were the only songs I Every single course I’ve taken since grief of my father’s death, my brother’s knew how to play. But always paired with then has held this notion in mind. I’m struggles with mental illness and my first them were a few traditional blues (“Hard hopeful that a thesis comes of this work, real experience of romantic betrayal. This time killing floor,” “Troubled in mind,” but I know that the real outcome is that I combination of loss and pain baffled me “Mamie”) that let me contact such intense am better. I feel energized about life and and I couldn’t even figure out which loss pain...there were times I no longer consumed by the cloud of to mourn first. My first session with a couldn’t sing for the sobs ...most powerful at grief. I have had many opportuninew counselor was devoted to helping me coming, but my fingers ties to bring my field of study into an all-day Lenten prioritize my grief—to find an accessible kept playing. being through presenting blues and retreat at Potosi entrance into this pain. By September, I had my own songs as a way to hear the maximum security psalms of lament with new ears. As a singer who has sung since my waded through months memory began, my catharsis was, not of this experience, during The most powerful experience prison.
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