Lamentation - A Healthy Alternative to Prozac

Lamentation can be a useful color in our emotional palate. It is an intregal part of the passionate, messy, improvisatory art of being spirit in flesh. If you've ever heard Dowland's amazing lute song "In Darkness Let Me Dwell" you've heard the master at his most melancoly... an "artistic" mood of Lament that was well accepted in the Renaissance. Traditional societies have long recognized the cleansing Lamentations provide the human heart, mind and soul. Why should we modern folks be any different?

Maybe we all need to explore Lamentations and a deeper Ceremony of Grief...knashing of teeth, tearing clothes, communal sobbing and throwing ashes in our hair. Maybe we are getting a bit too neat and polite about grief in our society. We are told it is best to suppress, to mask, to quickly alleviate our grief and, consequently, we and the world suffer. Lamentation is honest and, therefore, healing. It is a keening wail of pain that brings us to our knees, causes us to look so deeply inside we are forced to look beyond our selves and cry out for help. In our deepest need, we can choose to call out to God for he is waiting to open areas of our lives we may have never before had the courage to explore. We call to God because we have a history with him. We know he has helped others before us.

Psalm 42
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"
These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
among the festive throng.

Why are you so downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of Jordan,
the heights of Hermon - from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.

By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me -
a prayer to the God of my life.

I say to God my Rock,
"Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?"
My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"

Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.