Bonus: Monthly Spiritual Practice

A Crying Meditation of Lament

This month, with all of the pain and sorrow in recent news about the treatment of Haitians at the border in Del Rio and the continued sorrow in Afghanistan, I’ve added an additional, bonus practice. Let’s grieve our laments with a crying meditation.

Find a quiet time and space to lean in. Light a candle, maybe. Take a deep inhale. Hold it for one heartbeat and then exhale and begin.

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Walter Brueggemann, my favorite Scripture teacher, points out that even though about one third of the Psalms are psalms of “lament,” these have been the least used by Catholic and Protestant liturgies. We think they make us appear weak, helpless, and vulnerable, or show a lack of faith. So we quickly resort to praise and thanksgiving. We forget that Jesus called weeping a “blessed” state (Matthew 5:5) and that only one book of the Bible is named after an emotion: Jeremiah’s book of “Lamentation.”

Richard Rohr, The Center for Action and Contemplation

When was your last time you had a good, sad cry? How did you receive those tears? Did you shame them away? Explain them away? Work, sleep or even pray them away? 

We aren’t a culture that is good with crying, even though crying is how we come into the world – alive, loud, and inconsolable, until we receive our first touch of compassion cradled in empathy, swaddled in love. 

Humanity is made to cry. Tears are part of our biology. They help release whatever we try to dam up within the walls of our hearts. It does’t matter if the levee is made of joy or pain. 

Jesus wept. But even more so, Jesus wept with those who were weeping. Fully human and fully divine. He wept on the dark side of life just before calling Lazarus back to life. 

Victor Hugo wrote, “He does not weep who does not see.” A good cry makes us feel better because it proves that we are human. Our mourning, lamenting and weeping bring us from the brink of death back to life, salt-crusted, basted, and tendered with tears. 

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A GUIDED CRYING MEDITATION

If you’d like to do this meditation with music, by all means do so. Preferably, choose instrumental, melancholic music. The only voice allowed to enter the room and penetrate the silence should be your own. 

1. Begin by selecting one of the following questions to take with you into a place and time of meditation: 
   
   What or who has hurt you the most? 
   What (or whom) have you lost, but miss immensely?
   What (or whom) has been broken, but never mended?
   What happened that you wish never happened? 
   What regret has turned into a longing? 
   What (or whom) has been a big disappointment? 
   What healing is needed that may very well never come? 
   What (or whom) has burdened, broken, and smashed your heart?
   

2. If you’re able, lie down. Now imagine you are beneath Darkness. Allow it to cover you like a veil. Darkness is not without purpose. Suppose the purpose of the darkness is to shield and protect your solitude. Another possibility is to try this practice in the shower or bath in darkness. If you’d like, add a candle – but allow in darkness. The darkness is there to comfort and console you. The single flicker of a candle is there to reassure you that darkness cannot swallow light.
   

3. Breathe in. Breathe out.
   Breathe in. Breathe out.
   Breathe in. Breathe out.
   

4. Now think back to the question you selected. Answer it in your heart and whisper to God. Whatever feelings comes up, bear them. You will not carry them alone. Darkness is well acquainted with grief and sadness. It knows the tune, sound, and every note weeping ever sung. You will be shrouded beneath the dark weight of God’s wing until all sorrow is absorbed and all terrifying shadows have lifted and gone. So stay, weep a while. And when you’re ready, welcome light back into your being. 

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This is a communal practice. Please feel welcome to add your prayers, thoughts, questions or reflections in the comments below. 

Shalom.