Die Psalms leer ons huil met hoop

Maar selfs nou nog, spreek die Here, 

draai terug na My met julle hele hart,

en met vas en geween en rouklag

en skeur julle hart en nie julle klere nie.

Joël 2:12

But Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.

W.B. Yeats

Oopgeskeur. Dis al ‘n cliché omdat dit waar is: There is a crack in everything (en jy kan dit seker anatomies ook beskou na Yeats) – that’s how the light gets in. Niks kan heel word as dit nie eers geskeur word nie.

Die naam van die boek wat ons ken as die Psalms is in Hebreeus Tehillim wat as “lofprysinge” vertaal kan word. So hoe leer dit ons huil? Wel, iemand het een keer gesê die Psalmdigter maak nie ‘n godsdiens uit sy beter oomblikke nie. Alle menslike ervarings en emosies – vreugde, angs, dankbaarheid, en selfs woede kom tot uitdrukking in die psalms. Die grond waarop elke psalm berus, is die digter se verbondenheid aan die lewende God. En in verbondenheid leef die psalmis teen God se bors. Glo hy dat sy God nie van porselein gemaak is nie en nie “beskerm” kan word teen al die seer van die lewe nie. In verbondenheid skreeu hy uit, “My God, my God waarom het U my verlaat?” In God se teenwoordigheid word selfs die ervaring van Sy afwesigheid uitgedruk. Ek lees nou die dag hierdie vers in die Psalms raak en dit bly my by: 

Die verborgenheid van die Here is vir die wat Hom vrees,

en sy verbond om hulle dit bekend te maak.

Ps. 25:14

Of soos Bonhoeffer geskryf het, “God is the Great Beyond in the midst of us.”

Ek het lank en wyd gelees oor die onderwerp van weeklag in die Psalms, juis omdat dit so kultuurvreemd en eintlik kerkvreemd geword het, en my gedagtes is grootliks ingelig deur die werk van Walter Brueggemann, Henri Nouwen, Cole Arthur Riley en Denise Ackerman. Denise skryf dat die engelse woord “lament” dit eintlik nie regkry om die uitdagende verhoudings in Afrikaans tussen klaag (lament) en aanklag (accusation) vas te vang nie. Dis nie net ‘n voertuig vir emosionele ontlading nie; dis verwant aan rou én meer as rou. Dit teken aan dat verhoudings en omstandighede erg suid gegaan het. Dis meer as uitvaar teen lyding of ‘n geslaan teen die bors of ‘n skuldbelydenis. Dis ‘n inmekaarkronkel van lyding en hoop, van bewustheid (van die realiteit) en geheue (van God se getrouheid), van woede en verligting, ‘n hunkering na wraak, vergifnis en genesing teen die hart van God. Dis ons manier om die ondraaglike te dra soos ons, in Joël se woorde, ons harte skeur. Dis, in wese, uiters menslik. Doodmenslik.

Denise skryf verder: 

Lament is risky speech. It is risky because it calls into question structures of power, it calls for justice, it pushes the boundaries of our relationships with one another and with God beyond the limits of acceptability. It is a refusal to settle for the way things are. It is reminding God that the human situation is not as it should be and that God as the partner in the covenant must act. Lament alternates between complaint and mourning and railing and accusing. Lament is never an end in itself. It is undergirded by the hope that God not only can but that God will hear the cries of the suffering and the penitent and will act with mercy and compassion.

Sy verwoord dit so in haar boek After the Locusts:

For me, the heart of lament is in the psalms. For years I knew little about them except for the occasional reading of Psalm 23 at a funeral. Then I went on a retreat and was given Psalm 139 to meditate on. With great relief, I realised that there was no one “right” way to speak to God. I read that God has “searched me and known me”, that God can “discern my thoughts from far away,” and is “acquainted with all my ways.” All my decoys, deceptions, and doubts are known. “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” When I got to the lines that said: “For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb … Your eyes beheld my unformed substance, in your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed,” I gave up any pretense of a cover-up. I could strip away the self-knotted noose of not being up to scratch. With nowhere to hide, there seemed no point anymore in playing hide and seek with myself. From that time onwards the psalms have been the source of many little epiphanies. If you read nothing else in the bible, do read the psalms (and the Gospel of Mark). They give us a language to “say it as it is” to God. When prayer becomes a repetitive chore, I turn to the psalms. When I feel at war with myself, the psalms allow me to question, complain, or rage, be penitent, depressed, or joyous. As an added bonus, I can immerse myself in the wonder and beauty of their poetry. The psalms are quite simply the truth about the world as it is. The psalms say it all – God absent, God present, God mysterious, God known, God or wrath, and God of love and mercy.

Ons het stilte nodig om getransformeer te word. Maar ons het ook taal nodig daarvoor. Dorothy Sölle aan die woord:

If people are not to remain unchanged in suffering, if they are not to be blind and deaf to the pain of others, if they are to move from purely passive endurance to suffering that can humanize them in a productive way, then one of the things they need is a language.

Dorothy Sölle

Denise beskryf lament voorts as die enigste taal om met die probleem van (onvermydelike) pyn om te gaan; nie op te los nie, om te sit daarmee. Daar is natuurlik baie maniere om te reageer op pyn. Ons kan dit verdoof, apaties staan, stomgeslaan wees, woedend raak, draai na ateïsme. Lament leer ons om te sit met ons vrae, om die versoeking van apatie, stomheid, woede en ateïsme te weerstaan terwyl ons ons hande vuil maak met die daaglikse dinge van lewe. 

Ek herroep Rilke:

Ek smeek jou … om geduld te hê met alles wat onopgelos in jou hart lê. Om die vrae lief te hê asof hulle geheime kamers is, of boeke geskryf in vreemde tale. Moenie soek vir die antwoorde wat nie nou vir jou gegee kan word nie – jy sal in elk geval nie weet hoe om hulle nou te leef nie. En dis juis die punt – om alles ten volle te leef, te beleef, te deurleef. Leef nou die vrae. Miskien, op ‘n dag in die toekoms, sal jy dan stil-stil, onopgemerk, sonder dat jy eers agterkom, jou pad in die antwoord in leef.

In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,

there is a deafening alleluia

rising from the souls

of those who weep,

and of those who weep with those who weep.

Ann Weems

Walter Brueggemann beskryf Israel se weeklag as ‘n oefening in “geweldige chutzpah”. Denise lewer kommentaar daarop: “These ancient people simply refused to settle for things as they were. They believed that God could, should, and indeed would do something to change unbearable circumstances. Their lament was candid, intense, robust and unafraid. They complained, mourned, wept, chanted dirges and cursed. They assailed the ears of God, believing they could wring the hand of God and insisting their petitions be taken so seriously that, in doing so, God is put at risk. Chutzpah indeed! This is a language that is honest, that does not shirk from naming the unbearable, that does not lie down in the face of suffering or walk away from God.”

Sy gebruik die volgende akkurate beeld: Lament is like a hot poultice applied to a festering boil. At first it is painful; it burns, and one application does not do the trick. Gradually, the inflammation becomes localised, the poultice draws the pus out, the angry redness subsides, the pain is relieved and healing begins.

Om pyn te verwerk is een ding, maar om dit in die publiek te doen? Meeste van ons sê vinnig “jammer” as ons emosioneel raak voor mense. Is huil nie maar ‘n binnekamerding nie? Wat het die kerk daarmee te doen? Denise se antwoord hierop: 

I am pleading of a church that laments suffering and injustice. The church should draw contemporary political and social concerns into its rites. It need not shy away from lament. Instead of worship services that are unremittingly positive in tone, there is room for mourning and protest – not as an end in themselves – but as a holding together of loss and hope. Lament does not end in despair – it ends in affirmation and praise that are hard won. Why? Because it has grappled with radical doubt about God’s presence in the world; because it is compelled by the belief that God can be worshipped despite the reality of human suffering’ because it comes “out of the depths”; because truth is at the heart of prayer of lament. There is much cause of lament, yet its loss stifles our questions about evil in the world. Instead we settle of a God who is covered with a sugar-coated veneer of religious optimism whose omnipotence will “make everything right in the end”. Religious optimism differs deeply from a life of faith that is unafraid to examine suffering but is nonetheless grounded in hope. Religious optimism prefers to sanitize God by removing God from the ugliness of evil and suffering. This is a God whom we dare not approach with our genuine grief and with whom we are in a relationship of eternal infantilism. The language of lament is direct and truthful about suffering; it names the unnameable to God and in so doing helps to heal our doubts and to restore our faith in our power to call on God to act on our cries. This makes life worth living.

Henri Nouwen skryf my hart oop as hy die dansles (die rou in dans verander word) van die Heilige Gees beskryf: 

“Mourn, my people, mourn. Let your pain rise up in your heart and burst forth in you with sobs and cries. Mourn for the silence that exists between you and your spouse. Mourn for the way you were robbed of your innocence. Mourn for the absence of a soft embrace, an intimate friendship, a life-giving sexuality. Mourn for the abuse of your body, your mind, your heart. Mourn for the bitterness of your children, the indifference of your friends, your colleagues’ hardness of heart. Mourn for those whose hunger for love brought them AIDS, whose desire for freedom brought them to refugee camps, whose hunger for justice brought them to prisons. Cry for the millions who die from lack of food, lack of care, lack of love…. Don’t think of this as normal, something to be taken for granted, something to accept…. Think of it as the dark force of Evil that has penetrated every human heart, every family, every community, every nation, and keeps you imprisoned. Cry for freedom, for salvation, for redemption. Cry loudly and deeply, and trust that your tears will make your eyes see that the Kingdom is close at hand, yes, at your fingertips!”

Henri Nouwen

Brueggemann stel voor dat toegang tot die lewe meestal deur die weerstandige deur van pyn is. Daardie deur word toegehou deur afgodery (van ‘n god wat nie swaarkry of ly nie) en deur ideologie (van ‘n sisteem wat nooit misluk nie).

Hy skryf so in Israel’s Praise – Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology: 

In our contemporary society we have arrived at a manufactured religion, worshiping a god from whom we dare expect no serious transformation. Indeed we prefer a god who has become a guarantor for the way things are. We absolutize the present and imagine it has always been the way it is. Because we have no memory, we articulate a god who has no history. Because we treasure no past, we cannot recall God’s past with us. The erosion of our language about God is rooted in

• our failure of nerve about our memory

• our loss of authority about tradition

• our embarassment about our concrete and therefore scandalous experience

The outcome, surely, is an idol, an immobilizing transcendence, a god so secure, so established, so allied with the American dream that there is no space left for anguish, ambiguity, uncertainty, hurt beyond guilt.

Ek lees nou die dag ‘n interessante ding, alhoewel dit my geensins verbaas het nie: Hallelujah van Leonard Cohen het eintlik sowat 80 verse gehad en van dié wat oorgebly het soos ons dit vandag ken word dit verder verkort (lees: haal die dubbelsinnige strofes uit) deur meestal Christelike gemeenskappe vir meestal “Christelike” doeleindes. 

Waar het ons die idee gekry dat dit Christelik is om nie die dubbelsinnigheid, die teenstrydigheid, die paradokse, die vrae, die onversoenbaarheid, die traumas van die lewe aan te spreek nie?!

Ek kan dit nie beter sê as Cole Arthur Riley in This Here Flesh nie:

You can’t tell me that it doesn’t change everything that the one who created all things and holds together all things cried. If Christ wept for Lazarus, he must’ve done so not out of an absence of hope or faith, but out of love. It as an honoring. When we weep for the conditions of this world, we become truth-tellers in its defense. People who can say, This is not good. It is not well. People who have seen the face of goodness and refuse to call good and curse by the same name.

I am most disillusioned with the Christian faith when in the presence of a Christian who refuses to name the traumas of this world. I am suspicious of anyone who can observe colonization, genocide, and decay in the world and not stirred to lament in some way.

I can only wonder why we have so many depictions of the cross with Christ looking stoic and resolved and so few with him crying out in pain and abandonment. When I read the story, he does not seem composed; he seems devastated. When we reconstruct a Christ whose very face remains unmoved, how are we to trust that he feels or longs for anything at all? A passionless saviour cannot be trusted to save. I have never felt closer to.God than when he has tears running down his face. I don’t delight in this, but by this, I know that I am seen. There is no such things as a lone wail. Every howl reverbarates off the walls of God’s chest and finds its way back to us, carrying his own tears with it. I think when God bears witness to our lament, we discover that we are not calling out to a teacher but inviting God as a nurturer – a mother who hears her child crying in the night. She wakes, rises and comes to the place where we lie. She rushes her holy warmth against our flesh and says, I’m here.

Lament is not anti-hope. It’s not even a stepping-stone to hope. Lament itself is a form of hope. It’s an innate awareness that what is should not be. As if something is written on our hearts that tells us exactly what we are meant for, and whenever confronted with something contrary to this, we experience a crumbling. And in the rubble, we say, God, you promised. We ask, Why? And how could we experience such a devastation if we were not on some mysterious plane, hoping for something different. Our hope can be only as deep as our lament is. And our lament as deep as our hope.

Despair is lament emptied of hope.

We will not heal divorced from our emotions. A spirituality that depends on positivity will lead not only to emotional fallacies but also eventually to delusions of all kinds. People whose faiths are predicated on happiness make for dangerous friends and woefully disconnected fellow humans. Sometimes I think that if some Christians stopped talking about escaping a someday hell and started bearing witness to the hellish conditions of life and the world at present, they’d see a lot more people in their churches come Sunday. When I watch somebody name what should not be and earnestly question God about it, I immediately become a fraction of the skeptic I am. Lament is a very compelling apologetic.

Aren’t your eyelids

Tired of keeping

Prisoners? Those tears

Are precious

Minerals. Lap them up

Like a medicine – 

It’s called healing.

Pyn is die matriks van genesing en lofprysing. Die Psalmdigter sing, bid en prys op maniere wat pyn omvorm in hoop en rou in moontlikheid. In hierdie uitdrukking, ontmoet sy vertroue in God en sy omhelsing van die menslike realiteit.

The lament psalms are obviously a scandal in the church, because they cannot be prayed to a god who does nothing, and because they must not be prayed within a social system that cannot be changed or critized. The lament psalms are unworkable and inappropriate in a situation dominated by idolatry and ideology. For that reason they have largely dropped out of the repertoire of the church. If we are to permit the church back into its pain, in order that the church may seriously praise, then we must recover the use of these lament psalms.

Gaan lees gerus Psalm 13, Psalm 38 & 39, Psalm 51 en Psalm 88 om maar net ‘n paar te noem. Verkieslik in die ouer vertalings – die nuwes is geneig om die liggaamsdele uit te haal en dit alles “kop toe te vat” en meer verteerbaar of gesofistikeerd te maak.

Ek sluit net enkele uittreksels in:

Daar is geen gesonde plek aan my liggaam nie, omdat U my vervloek het.

Daar is geen vrede in my gebeente nie, omdat ek sonde gedoen het.

Ja, my sondeskuld oorweldig my (het bo-oor my kop gegaan), soos ‘n swaar las is dit ondraaglik vir my.

My wonde stink, dit sweer vanweë my dwaasheid.

Ek is kromgetrek, heeltemal geboë, die hele dag loop ek in rouklere rond.

Ja, my lende is ontsteek, daar is geen gesonde plek aan my liggaam nie.

Ek is kragteloos, heeltemal verpletter, ek kreun omdat my hart onstuimig klop.

Ps. 38:4-9

My Heer, al my versugtinge lê ontbloot voor U,

en my gesug is nie vir U verborge nie.

My hart klop wild, my krag het my verlaat,

en die lig van my oë – selfs dit is nie meer daar nie.

Ps. 38:10-11

God, make a fresh start in me,shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.

Going through the motions doesn’t please you,a flawless performance is nothing to you.I learned God-worshipwhen my pride was shattered.Heart-shattered lives ready for lovedon’t for a moment escape God’s notice.

Psalm 51 (lament of the penitent) MSG 

Walter Brueggemann vir oulaas:

In a dramatic way, language leads reality. Israel’s credos, laments and songs of thanksgiving reshape reality. That is why they are said and sung. 

Israel’s best doxology is not self-congratulation nor is it resignation. It is hope kept sharp by pain still present. It is praise kept honest by candid abrasiveness. It is celebration kept open for subversiveness. It is not self-satisfied endorsement of what is, but the insistence that God and the empire must be open, and must pay attention to what will be given out beyond pain into joy. The praise of Israel is deeply and uncompromisingly rooted in concreteness. But with that rootage secure, it takes off in flights of possibility. It is my judgment that in Western Christianity, so long self-assured and legitimate, our primary pastoral task is to sing back down to the specificity of hurt, to the amazement of healing, to the miracle of transformation.

Ek weet hierdie was meer-van-‘n mini-tesis-minder-van-‘n-kom-Sondag-kerk-toe-blog, maar ek glo werklik dat ons as gemeenskap hiervoor geroep word. Om “terug ondertoe” te sing. InVia het uit staanspoor ten doel gehad om vroedvrou en nie epiduraal te wees nie en ek weet dat ons “witnesses” (of soos een van my ander leermeesters Bayo Akomolafe sê: “with-nesses”) moet wees van die seer, die genesing en die transformasie. As jy nog bandwydte het, gaan luister gerus Lament Songs van The Porter’s Gate.

- Frieda van den Heever