A Container for Sorrow
Lamentations
The Bible is a collection of different literary genres. It contains story, narrative, historical accounts, parables, and most important for our purposes, poetry. What makes poetry different from other types of literature is that it uses form as part of its message. It is not just the words themselves that contain meaning but the very structure of the poem.
In Psalm 119, the psalmist uses a device called an acrostic to organize their thoughts. In this longest of the psalms every eight verses is keyed to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In order, the poem explores the wonders of the word of God, systematically breaking down every aspect of its glory.
In the Book of Lamentations this same device is put to the test again. However, this time it is used to make some kind of order out of chaos. Jerusalem caught between the superpowers of her day, had revolted again against Babylon expecting Egypt to intervene. Instead she was brutally crushed, her temple, walls, pride all destroyed as her people were led off into captivity. The prophet Jeremiah uses the acrostic to impose some kind of form on formlessness.
One year ago, my son came home from the hospital after his first surgery to remove a tumor behind his left eye pressing against his brain. It had gone well, but we knew that a second surgery was still ahead of us. In February, when we saw the MRI and received the diagnosis, I started writing poems.
The poems I wrote were not free-flowing confessions of pain but tightly structured sonnets, odes, ballads, anything that required me to slow down and choose words carefully. My inner life was a jumble, a mess, that with each thought would crowd in with twenty more unbidden, each jostling the other for attention. The poems provided a container to hold my sorrow that was threatening to burst out uncontrollably.
Layers
Through twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet Jeremiah turns Jerusalem’s plight around and views it through every conceivable angle. This is the form of the acrostic at work. We often use the acrostic in English as a mnemonic device, like “Every Good Boy Does Fine” to help us remember which notes go on the lines of the treble clef. Lewis Carroll finished his Through the Looking Glass with an acrostic poem that hides the name of the little girl who inspired the story in its first letters, Alice Pleasance Liddell.
A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky A boat beneath a sunny sky, Lingering onward dreamily In an evening of July— Children three that nestle near, Eager eye and willing ear,
.
Jeremiah is neither using the acrostic to help with memory or to hide something to be found later on careful reading. Instead the form is what forces him to make a patient catalog out of something that naturally wants to spiral out of control. The weight of trauma resists careful assessment, but the acrostic demands it.
As Jerusalem is described from Aleph to Tav she is portrayed as a lonely widow, a slave who used to enjoy the life of a princess, a lover scorned left comfortless. Each description adds a layer of complexity to the grief.
The simple answer is that sorrow is just an emotion that will also pass like any other. However, the reality is much more difficult to face. There are layers to grief that need attention.
In October, my father died. I rushed back to Oregon from Tokyo and spent the last few days with him. Except I did not know that it would be the last few days. He was recovering from a hip surgery but there were complications. They moved him from the ICU thinking he was getting better but things instead got worse.
I wrote this poem just days before he passed away.
Model “A” Ford
Gently handed
small model
shaky hands once strong
enough to manhandle engine mounts
Asked what it was —“Dunno”
Every part number
known by heart
Taken apart,
pieced together,
fiddled incessantly
Until ignition start and hum
Hands stained like oil
incessantly fiddle
Invisible pieces
assemble, disassemble
“What you working on?”
‘Carburetor’
beautiful word.
Went in
simple repair
Came back
Everything out of alignment
Fluids leaking
“How many of your friends
Have this car?”
Asking again
Assembling
”S’pose they all do.”
Piecing it together.
Poetry is a mechanism that allows us to sort out layers of meaning. It goes beyond surface descriptions and gets at the complexity of life where multiple things are all happening at once.
Through the Side Door
About half way through the first chapter of Lamentations Jeremiah shifts from talking about Jerusalem to giving her a voice. He moves from the third person to the first, “Oh Lord, behold my affliction!” This both intensifies what is happening but also signals the reader that normal rules no longer apply. We have moved firmly into the realm of art.
In my professional work I train local churches in places that have been affected by disaster or war how to help children recover from trauma. We use the story of a little penguin named Pete who is separated from his family when his ice shelf falls into the sea. The story is a key component because it allows us to talk about lots of difficult emotions like fear, anger, sadness, frustration, but without touching the child’s own emotion directly.
The problem with talking to a child about their traumatic experience is that there are defense mechanisms in place. These experiences and memories are much too painful to be approached directly. The story gives us a “side door” through which we can let the children know that the emotions they are feeling are normal and that they are not alone.
As adults, our defenses are much more formidable. C.S. Lewis called them “watchful dragons” which would easily defeat any frontal assault, but which a story can “steal by”. This is the reason why Jesus told stories, parables, truths that could break through crusty tradition, theology, and doctrine to reach hearts longing for change.
The truth that Jeremiah had to convey was that Jerusalem was not just a victim of heathen empires that had attacked God’s chosen people. She was complicit. Her destruction was of her own making. The reason why she was comfortless was not just because her lovers had forsaken her, but because God was the source of her affliction.
As I wrote poetry last year during my son’s surgeries and my father’s death I needed something less painful than prose. I needed art to steal past my watchful dragons. I was struggling with the awful spiral that would not let me understand what I was feeling. I needed form to force myself to contemplation. I was juggling faith and despair and needed poetry that could hold both at once.