Relearning the Language of Lament
In the moment I learned I had to give birth to my daughter who wasn’t going to make it, something strange happened to me. This sound — a loud and piercing outcry — a sound I had never made before, burst out forcefully from the depths of my grieving soul and filled the hospital room.
Although I had never made that sound before, my ears recognized it instantly. It was a sound I heard in Caribbean funerals, or from the elders in my family in response to fateful news. It was the sound my childhood friend’s mother made when he collapsed suddenly and had to be taken away by ambulance. It’s a sound that’s almost impossible to fully describe unless you’ve heard it before. It’s a sound I tried to explain to a table of friends once, and only one of those friends nodded in recognition of that intense, disturbing sound.
That sound was wailing.
And although it was new from me, it was almost like I was speaking a mother tongue I had forgotten.
The doctor heard my loud cry and rushed over from the other side of the room confused and searching for clues. “What’s wrong?”. He knew he needed to respond quickly. And the nurse holding my hand, responded simply and compassionately: “She’s losing her child”.
Thank God for nurses.
What Lament Looks Like
There’s an article floating around the internet, written by a black mom on white friendships. In the article, entitled, Can my children be friends with white people?, she says some harsh things. When she shares what she will tell her children, she says:
“I will teach them to be cautious, I will teach them suspicion, and I will teach them distrust. Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people.”
And about the depth of those so-called “friendships”, she says:
“We can still all pretend we are friends. If meaningful civic friendship is impossible, we can make do with mere civility — sharing drinks and watching the game.”
And what I’m seeing from many people in response to this article is evidence of fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose. This opinion piece, unlike many articles we read on the internet, was not meant to be an informative report. It goes beyond that. The author was engaging in lament.
Lament, much like wailing, is a particular expression of grief. It’s an art form, a healing practice, often a prayer and a spiritual discipline. One we don’t have much concept for here in the US.
We don’t place much value on it here. When someone dies, we give the grieved three days and we expect them to mourn gracefully, privately, and quietly. But in other cultures, the entire community comes to a halt, people are wailing, throwing themselves on the ground, parading the casket through the town, tearing their clothes, etc. But as ungraceful as this way of grieving is, it is deeply healing because it is truth. Nothing about death and grief is graceful. It’s messy, ugly and wrong. Lament allows us the space to grieve over what is wrong just as it is, before we move forward to what it should be.
Lament is its own form of expression with its own rules and structure. For example, there is a reason the writer waited to the very end to share about her close white friendships. It’s because, in the language of lament, we don’t name the good until the end (if we decide to at all). Lament also tends to have a particular tone and tends to ignore “the rules” about what we are and aren’t “supposed” to say. Look at psalms and lamentations in the Bible and you’ll see the exact pattern: sharply stated words that seem to almost go against “what everyone knows” and against cultural etiquette, followed by a statement of what is good:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy…(Ps 22:1–3)”
Lament is an ancient practice that heals our selves and our communities through honest and raw expression of pain and suffering.
What Lament Accomplishes
Lament pours out the pain. Lament puts it all out there, and doesn’t hold back. That’s because one of it’s purposes is to let out the pain we feel in our minds and bodies, so it doesn’t stay stuck, becoming toxic suffering.
Lament shines a light on the mess (and beauty). It’s an attempt to give voice to unspeakable pain. When we, instead, attempt to keep the expression of deep trauma in a box of rules and etiquette, it eventually finds a way out: by breaking out of that box. Sometimes that looks like an explosion of words, messy metaphors, pointed poetry, harsh anger, placing God and all goodness on trial, shouting, dancing, stomping feet, crowds of people in pain stopping traffic bringing the whole community to a halt.
Lament sounds an alarm. Lament tends to be sharp-edged, piercing, and not at all graceful. Like wailing, the loud and forceful outcry of lament is meant to stop us in our tracks. It’s meant to rub us the wrong way, to engage a gut response. It is off so that those hearing it know something is off.
I think if we read that mom’s article as an informational report, the only proper response to it is to cringe or be offended: “How dare she say things so extreme?”. If we recognize it as lament, then we realize that the point is not her extreme statements, it is to point to the extreme things that are happening to her. Lament’s purpose is to wake us up, to expose us to something offensive happening in the world, to open our eyes and ears to realities we don’t notice until we are moved to ponder: “What is causing so much pain?”
Lament calls to the side of the hurt. Like the doctor who rushed to my side ready to respond, and like the nurse who held my hand and translated my pain, lament calls us to seek to understand and to stand in that pain with the hurting.
Lament forms a bridge. It’s an opportunity to share in the one thing every single person who has ever walked this earth knows well: suffering. Lament is a bridge and when we are brave enough to stand in the middle of it, we are actually able to find common, higher, and healing ground.
Shortly after I heard the news about my daughter, my aunt called on the phone. And when she heard the news… she wailed. Then something interesting happened. From the depths of my soul, I felt seen and heard, and knew it would be possible to heal. My ears heard the echo of my own pain, a sign that this was not going to be endless anguish because it wasn’t falling on deaf ears. And in that release, tears were able to fall quietly down my face.
Lament give us space for deep healing. Being able to break the cultural rules so we can express the inexpressible means we don’t have to stay prisoner to the pain stuck in our hearts, minds, and bodies. And being able to sound an alarm to those listening (even if it’s only God), gets others to stop and pay attention and use their connectedness as a healing force.
You’ve Heard Lament Before
Even though we in the US tend to be especially unfamiliar with lament, most of us do have an innate understanding of it and how to respond to it, in small doses.
When a dear friend who has been hurt deeply and repeatedly by men, states “I don’t trust men anymore”, many of us understand it would be a mistake to take that moment to convince that friend she’s wrong, that men are actually really great. When an entire community of women take the opportunity to say “we, too see a problem with men” many of us know it would be a mistake to condemn that message. Instead, recognizing it as lament, we ask questions: “What in the world is wrong here?”
Okay, a less loaded example:
When a child huffs through the door after school, slams their backpack down and exclaims “I hate school; all of my teachers are stupid!”, we know innately what response would be most helpful:
Unhelpful response: “I don’t like your language. We don’t use the words ‘hate’ and ‘stupid’ in this house. Change your tone.”.
Helpful response: “Woah, what happened at school today?”
Any response other than seeking to understand the thing that caused the outcry, and stand (often silently) with the person in pain, would be a missed opportunity. Using that opportunity to correct, would be a misdirected focus on the point of the outcry — to let us know something is off and causing them pain.
It would have been mistake to correct the psalmist or Jesus in His dying outcry about a God who was ignoring him by saying “You’re wrong, Jesus. God never turns his face away. He always answers prayers!” Or perhaps if you were feeling more bold, yelling up to Him on the cross, “That’s absurd. Aren’t YOU God?!” Instead, every person listening to His outcry in that moment would have instantly recognized that as His prayer of lament. He was speaking an ancient language — a mother tongue — they all knew well. No correction was necessary. The only proper response would have been to witness it and wonder, “What is so wrong with this world that even God laments?”.
And in the same way, we must look at this grieving mom’s sharply stated words through the lens of lament. That when she leads with “It is impossible to convey the mixture of heartbreak and fear I feel for [my son].” that she is — likely knowingly — about to break all of the rules about what one is allowed to say, so that she — first — can heal, and so we may possibly listen, and in our alarm start asking questions, seeking understanding, and standing with her and with many black mothers in that pain.
We must learn to recognize when a member of a marginalized community is using the language of lament to express their pain. I personally, can’t think of a single time where I’ve publicly lamented about racism without being corrected. Not once. How beautiful it would be if my community learned the art of corporate lament.
My hope is that we can re-learn that ancient language here in the US. My hope is that we can hear its piercing, “offensive” outcry and have our ears recognize it instantly. My hope is when someone is giving voice to unspeakable pain — breaking out of the box of expectations so they can sound that alarm — that we would rush to their side to look for clues to the source of that pain, and then bravely stand in it with them, bearing witness to what is happening. Maybe then, in learning to echo back the the reality of that pain, we could learn to heal the pain in our own selves and in our communities.
“To lament is to name what is wrong, what is out of order in God’s world, what keeps human beings from thriving in all their creative potential. Simple acts of lament expose these conditions, name them, open them to grief and anger, and make them visible for remedy. In its complaint, anger, and grief, lamentation protests conditions that prevent human thriving and this resistance may finally prepare the way for healing.” -Kathleen O’Connor
Resources on Lament:
