 Good afternoon and welcome to morning our losses together during COVID-19, the good news of biblical event. This webinar is coming to you from the Church Leadership Center at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. At AMBS, we offer leadership and theological education through our lifelong learning programs and through our degree programs. We have a master of divinity and three master of arts degrees, through which we are currently serving students from six continents. My name is Jewel Gingrich-Langenacker. I'm the Dean of Lifelong Learning at AMBS and the Director of the Church Leadership Center. We at AMBS are grieving the loss of life that is happening all around us, lost due to COVID-19, which has spiked in our area in recent weeks to overwhelming numbers and which is disproportionately affecting people of color in our community and in other communities. And we grieve the loss of life due to white supremacy and police brutality in Minneapolis and across our nation and in so many other places around the world. And it is our prayer that this webinar will provide new insights in how biblical faith can speak to us in this time. Our speakers today are Dr. Bob Yoder. He, Bob is an advancement associate here at AMBS and has served for nearly 25 years in congregational and conference and camp and college ministry settings. He previously taught youth ministry at Goshen College and as an adjunct professor at AMBS. In 2007, he earned a Doctor of Ministry from Western Theological Seminary and his doctoral project was later published as Helping Youth Grieve, the Good News of Biblical Lament. Pamela Yoder is pastor for community life and pastoral care at College Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana. Pamela has served for 18 years as a congregational pastor in two different Mennonite congregations and is currently in her 10th year at College Mennonite. She offers leadership for the congregation's Stephen ministry as well as a visitation and care team, bereavement team, reentry ministry and other caregiving volunteers. Bob and Pamela are both ordained pastors in Mennonite Church USA and alumni of AMBS. Having met each other as students in our MDib program. I'm told that they graduated together on a Friday night and were married on Saturday morning the next day. They've been married for 19 years and live in Goshen with their two children. After their presentation, there will be a time for questions and you're welcome to start submitting questions now and throughout the webinar. Again, please use the Q&A for that. We will not be checking the chat for questions. So we will send the PowerPoint presentation to you sometime in the next couple of days. Just so you can be aware that as they're sharing the PowerPoint, you will receive a copy of that. Welcome Bob and Pamela. We turn this time over to you now. It is really good to be with you in this way and Pamela and I are excited and happy to share out of our experiences as pastors and also of our studies just over the years. For myself, my work with biblical lament started more in my early 20s when I had several people close to me who suddenly passed away. And so then later in life when I was in my doctoral program, I reflected back on that time and reflected on the ways that my faith, my community, my faith community, church, family, and others were all part of my own healing process during that time and healing journey. Today's outline, as you see, Pamela is going to share some pastoral observations and some congregational responses. And then I will share a little bit more in depth about what is biblical lament and connections to loss in human development. And then we will both together share a bit more of other ideas of how to engage biblical lament personally and also corporately. And then we'll have time for questions and answers from you folks. And so we look forward to engaging you in that way. Lament. There are so many losses, so many changes, so much to mourn and so much to lament. It's hard to know where to begin, but I'm going to begin with some verses from Psalm 30. To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication. What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me. O Lord, be my helper. You have turned my morning into dancing. You have taken off my sackcloth and closed me with joy so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give thanks to you forever. These verses from Psalm 30 and the whole Psalm in its entirety have been important to me for a couple of decades now, especially important to me in my early 20s when I was suffering from clinical depression, which thankfully I have emerged from much in the way of the psalmist saying you have turned my morning into dancing. I appreciate this Psalm and other Psalms, especially Psalms of lament, because they have given me permission and allowance to be angry, to be frustrated, to be sad, to cry out, and they also have helped me to remember, to remember God's presence, God's healing, and God's guidance. And they have given me hope for healing. Just a note here that I am responding out of my ministry context that Jewel mentioned College Mennonite Church in Goshen, Indiana, and I do not pretend to be an expert on your ministry context or leadership context or your personal situation, but I can share from my experience and some pastoral reflections. And these are observations of what is happening in my life, in maybe your life in our churches and our communities, but they're observations of the human condition, but I'm looking at it through a pastoral lens. In the description of the webinar, there were several things listed that we might be mourning and lamenting right now. And today as you listen and absorb, I just invite you to make note of a few questions. What do you resonate with as losses and things to lament? What have your loved ones, friends, and neighbors been lamenting? What are you hearing that might be a new idea of a loss to you? Certainly, there's much in the world to lament, wars and racism, poverty, economic disparity, cancer, climate change, and much more. But now we have this worldwide pandemic of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, which has affected all of us in different ways. It's affected our churches and our communities, but we have some commonalities in what we're experiencing as well. There is a list of things that we could note that we're hearing and seeing and experiencing that are what we're seeing around us. Some things are light and seemingly small, things that we've had to let go of. And other things that we're seeing and experiencing and observing run very deep and they bring anguish. And I'm going to just pepper you with a list of these situations and losses and changes. And I'm doing that intentionally because that's a bit of how things are coming at us right now. So just listen and reflect on those questions. We've had many delays and changes and losses. We've had to do learning by virtual learning and at home packets and homeschooling. We didn't have spring plays or musicals or concerts or not the usual end of school year activities. There wasn't a baseball season or other sports seasons that we're accustomed to. Schools and camps, places that have been formative spaces and safe places for children and youth have not been able to meet. Teachers who are used to making personal connections with their students and sharing reassuring smiles or touches on the shoulder to encourage their students have not been able to do that. We've missed birthday parties and graduations and open houses have needed to be done in different ways. We've canceled or delayed special anniversary celebrations or family reunions. Weddings have been postponed or changed dramatically and have become more stressful for the couples and families involved. Honeymoons have been altered and other vacations canceled or postponed. We're needing to handle funerals and memorial services differently. There's a lack of touch and contact. No handshakes or hugs. We've not been able to gather for worship. We might feel a loss of control of a lot of things. Not being able to be with loved ones who are sick. Couples that are separated, maybe one at home and another in a hospital or health care setting. That's been a time of a special disorientation for those with dementia. Transitions have become harder and more complicated. We haven't been sleeping well. We're not seeing smiles and other facial expressions due to needing to wear masks. Anxiety is heightening. Depression is deepening. Fear is rising. There's homelessness. Social service agencies are closed or they're operating differently or they're overwhelmed. In our community, the Latino population is especially fearful. Fearful of being more visible in our community, more visible to immigration and other law enforcement authorities. We may be experiencing loss of routine, loss of work, not enough work or our work has changed dramatically in a short amount of time. Loss of business, loss of loss of concentration, our regular summer activities that we're accustomed to are disrupted. And now there are the stresses of a new school year coming around the corner and what to do to stay safe. The list could go on and on and I'm sure I have missed some things and that's okay. This is just to help us reflect on all the things that are coming at us and the things that we have lost that we're concerned about that might lead us to lament. You can imagine with all of these things that we might be experiencing complex and compounded grief and we've noticed here in our congregation that with all of these things happening that we've needed to slow down and focus on lament and listen to what's going on and I will be sharing a bit about our worship series that we focused especially on lament a little bit later in the presentation. My academic study of focus was on the role of biblical lament in faith formation and pastoral care of young people and then later it was published as helping youth grieve the good news of biblical lament. In that study I noted that youth are more likely today than a few decades ago to die by suicide, to suffer from various different mental health illnesses, live in a home whose parent has been remarried, face pressures of growing up more deeply in different ways and loss and grief is a normal part of life and it expresses itself differently among youth and really among all of us. Loss also accompanies those joyous times, school transitions, graduating from eighth grade and going into the big high school of ninth grade until you get lost in the crowd. Driver's license is something that young people are excited or often excited about. It's a new level of freedom and it's a joyous time but death by car accidents is also one of the number one killers of young people. Dating, it's a wonderful fun thing until it's not anymore. High school graduation, marriage, parenthood. Pamela and I are enjoying our middle school, high school age children right now, two of them, but it wasn't so fun in those first several years when we struggled with infertility. There's lots of change in a short amount of time. Loss is not the exception. It is the norm really of all ages, not just of young people, but collectively youth groups or churches or other groups of people, collectively we carry much loss together. And what does our society tell us to do with our brokenness, our pain? Bottle it up, keep it private, have it stiff up her lip. What does our society expect us to do with our collective pain? Bomb the enemy, hatred, vilifying the other? For my doctoral project my thesis was this, that I believed there was a gap or absence in the Mennonite church culture which is my faith tradition and really the broader American society that does not enable young people to adequately engage in biblical lament. I believed there was a proliferation in our American culture for a feel-good attitude that compels us to rush through our pain and grief and view God's role in our lives as a therapeutic being who merely helps us when we need God to make us feel good. And at times I wondered if these cultural forces influence youth workers to rush you through their emotions, challenges, questions, doubts and transitions either because we are uncomfortable with our own grief issues or we simply struggle to know how to walk with young people in such times. So therefore there is difficulty in demonstrating a theology, an image of God, that allows for honest sharing and pain and suffering to be acknowledged in God's presence. And so I wondered if the stats about adolescence today impacts a significant number of youth are our youth ministry efforts attentive enough to these realities? Biblical lament can be one avenue that gives youth and really all of us space and permission to bring our gut-wrenching, honest thoughts, feelings and pains into the presence of God and our faith community. Biblical lament offers a way to voice and give language to life and faith experience and can serve as a prophetic witness to others. So for my particular project I invited three Mennonite pastors of youth to lead a six-minute timed writing prayer exercise with the different youth groups that they had walked with. To do this prayer exercise over several times over a period of about four to six months and then I collected feedback from these young people and also from the pastors and as well as collected some lament prayers from these young people that they had written during this time. And so the prayer exercise was a three-step prayer exercise where step one or act one is when the psalmist would often argue with God. They would get mad at God for something they blamed God for or some injustice in the world and they would pour out their raw emotions which then eventually led to step two. It's a time of when the psalmist remembered of God's goodness gradually those who complained to God remembered God's help in the past and know that God has heard them which then often led to step three praising God. Those who lamented realized that they can trust God with their lives and they tell God thanks for God's faithfulness in their life. But with these pastors I highlighted a big caution as they led this with their young people that this particular prayer exercise should not be treated as a magic formula that guarantees healing and transformation. I also impressed upon them a profound grace that I believed that we don't know how long it took these authors of psalms and other biblical laments to compose their prayers to God, you know, was it days, weeks, months, years, decades. Maybe they wrote step one and set it aside until they were in a place where they could be at a place of when they could remember of God's goodness. And maybe they wrote some more and set it aside again until they were at a place of where they could authentically and appropriately praise God again. Overall all three age groups appreciated the opportunity to express their honest emotions and feelings to God. Most of them had never prayed in this manner before but were very comfortable doing so. They believed their peers, family members, and other adults would enjoy this way of praying. I didn't observe any real difference between men and women, boys, and girls, but differences did show up among the different age groups, particularly in the content of what their prayers were. Here's an example of a lament prayer written by a junior hire. Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me in my time of need? Do you not love me like you say you do? Why have you not comforted me? You should have helped me in my time of need. I remember when you talked with me in my prayers. I remember when you walked with me in my mind. You have healed me, oh Lord, with your wonderful word of encouragement. You have helped me through my time of need, oh Lord. And another example from a senior hire. Lord, why am I this way? Why do you allow me to cause myself to sin and suffer? Why do I sin? Why do I force evil thoughts into my head? Why do my friends suffer so much and cause them to sin and hurt themselves? Thank you, Lord, for helping me through my tough time when I was cutting and punishing myself. You are truly the most high God and lead me to the high end, to the end. And from a post-high schooler. It is often hard, oh Lord, to feel your guidance. I fail to see your footprints, and I don't see how I can walk in your path. Where is your guiding beacon? Where is your path through the wilderness? I clear my vision, though, and I realize that while I cannot see a path, I can feel your hand on my shoulder. I embrace the fact that you have a purpose for me, and rejoice in the fact that you have always pulled me through. So what is biblical lament? My first quiz question for you today is, who famously cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? If you said Jesus, you're correct. Jesus relied on his Jewish spiritual heritage and tradition of lament. And he's quoting the first part of verse one of Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And the Psalms go on to say, why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but find no rest. What is biblical lament? Old Testament scholar Kathleen O'Connor states, there are prayers that erupt from wounds burst out of unbearable pain and bring it to language. They complain, shout, protest, take anger and despair before God and the community. They grieve, argue, find fault. Without complaint, there is no lament for. Although laments appear disruptive of God's world, they are acts of fidelity. In vulnerability and honesty, they cling obstinately to God and demand for God to see, hear, and act. Laments are prayers of the discontented, the disturbed and the distraught. They protest God's rule of the world, bemoan the speaker's physical condition, and whine about enemies. But remarkably, in the process of harsh complaint and resistance, they also express faith in God in the midst of in the midst of chaos, doubt, and confusion. Old Testament theologian Walter Bruggeman has described the Psalms in three overarching categories, those Psalms of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. Those of orientation describe the wonders of creation, the beauty of the Torah, the law, that of God's wisdom celebrating that, and celebrating that life is good, well-being. Life is good until some kind of disoriented experience comes our way. And so the Psalms of disorientation are the second category, according to Bruggeman, and the laments are one of those kinds of disorientation Psalms. And then the new orientation Psalms are those of thanksgiving and praise that often come out of a disoriented event or experience of some kind. The Psalms of disorientation, they recognize that life is also savagely marked by incoherence, a loss of balance and unrelieved symmetry. And by far, they are the largest category of Psalms. In fact, the Psalms of lament, approximately 40 to 45% of the 150 Psalms could be considered that of lament. And there's this structural pattern of lament that I described earlier, where step one, you'll often see the Psalmist arguing with God or complaining or protesting, speaking out, naming an injustice. And then it leads to step two, where I like to call it the holy but. You'll see it in the psalm when the psalmist has some kind of transformative experience, and they say something like, but I remember a time when God was good. In the Hebrew alphabet, you can clearly see it. The Hebrew letter, Vav, is used as a prefix, and you'll often see it on the front of the word, but, and it continues on. And then eventually it leads to the psalmist often praising God, recognizing God's faithfulness, God's fidelity with them in life. And so that's a common structural pattern of many laments. Here's an example, Psalm 13. The first four verses kind of step one, and then verse five is step two, and then verse six is step three. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord, my God. Give light to my eyes, where I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, I have prevailed. My foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. Many of the Psalms follow that pattern, but not all. Psalm 88, for example, starts in the pit and stays in the pit. It's an extreme form of lament and really is just step one. O Lord, God of my salvation, when at night I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you, incline your ear to my cry, for my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the pit. I am like those who have no help, like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand. You have put me in the depths of the pit in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. You have caused my companions to shun me. You have made me a thing of horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape. My eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O Lord. I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness? But I, O Lord, cry out to you. In the morning my prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me? Wretched and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors. I am desperate. Your wrath has swept over me. Your dread assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long. From all sides they close in on me. You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me. My companions are in darkness. And that's it. That's the end of the psalm. And we don't know what kind of resolve, if any, that this psalmist ever experienced. Many of the psalms of lament are written from a first person individual perspective. And there are a few that are more communal in nature. Take, for example, Psalm 137. The group prayer names injustice that's happened to them, and names God as the arbiter of justice. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captives asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said, tear it down, tear it down, down to its foundations, O daughter Babylon, you devastator. Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us. Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock. The book of Lamentations is five short chapters and poems with different voices. It describes the pain of the survivors in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon, and it describes the occupation of Babylon by some of those in Jerusalem and also by those that were carried off into exile to Babylon. This book is an extreme expression of Lament. Chapter one, we have two voices, the narrator and daughter Zion. Daughter Zion is the main voice in this chapter and she acknowledges that she may have sinned, but she cries out to God that no one is there to comfort her and simply begs God to look at her. By chapter two, the narrator who had a very small voice in chapter one has the predominant voice in chapter two, and we see that the narrator changes their tune. It's as if they came on to the scene of a nasty car accident and they were playing the role of an objective news reporter, staying fairly objective describing what they're seeing and what's going on, but in time the narrator becomes a compassionate advocate for daughter Zion. The narrator also cries out to God, God, nobody deserves this. Yes, they may have done something wrong, but nobody deserves this kind of treatment. God, just take a look at her. And so the narrator becomes a compassionate advocate alongside daughter Zion, does not take the voice of daughter Zion, but is a voice alongside daughter Zion. By chapter three, we have a different voice present, that of a strongman or a captive in Babylon and they speak, and this voice struggles to find witness. There is a little bit of hope right in the middle of chapter three, and sometimes you'll see that verse or two on mottos hanging up on people's houses or wherever, but as soon as those words of hope are uttered, the clouds of despair come shining in again and cover up those of sunlight. Chapter four, we have two other voices, that of a new narrator and the people speak. They are all hopeless, exhausted, and they blame the religious leaders for getting into their predicament, which leads to chapter five, the voice of the people again. It's one long petition demanding God's attention. This poem in chapter five is 22 lines long. It's an acrostic for the 22 Hebrew alphabet letters. And so the first line begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, alif. And the second line begins with the second letter, bait, and continues on, alif, bait, gimel, dalat, and so forth. Some interesting notes about the book of Lamentations. The voice of God is missing. God is silent. God does not speak. God does not get defensive of the human rants and complaints attacking God. And because God never speaks, the book honors the voices of pain. Lamentations is a house for sorrow because there is no speech for God. I like to imagine the book of Lamentations being like that of being in a funeral line. If you've ever been in the reception line at a funeral of a close person to you, you'll know that sometimes the words that can be best spoken to you by those coming to comfort you are really no words at all. It's silence. But it is their presence that impacts you and comforts you. And so I imagine the role of God in the book of Lamentations in that way. The Psalms and poetry of the canon, as well as stories, are designed in part to educate our emotions. I believe that the prayers of Lament are some of the richest, deepest, most intimate expressions of prayer found in the Bible between two parties who are in relationship with each other, between God and humanity. Through Lament, God invites us to be honest, to fully engage our emotions. And through Lament, God reminds us that God has broad enough shoulders to handle it. We are reminded that God is ever present with us. As we engage in Lament, I believe it can help us in our own faith maturation. As I said, Lament promotes honesty, authenticity, openness to ourselves, to other people, to God. It helps articulate obscure feelings, emotions, frustrations, questions, offers a faith vocabulary, and it models faith to one another. And as we compose our own story or my story of Lament, it connects with the greater God story. It challenges us to slow down, just as with any of the many spiritual prayer practices. Lament welcomes mystery and doubt. It challenges us to consider the cries of the world and may provoke prophetic questions. It teaches us skills and theological reflection and discernment. It recognizes life is not always easy or resolve as we'd like. And it helps us grow in our own understanding of God's fidelity. And as we journey with other people, I believe that Lament challenges us to become compassionate advocates, offers an avenue of protest to God, of the reality of hurt, loss, pain, and injustice. It enables us to name areas of abandonment by others, by God. And Lament is an intentional process to mourn our losses from those developmental realities, those realities of growing up, but also of those disruptive realities, those unexpected deaths, those significant car accidents that have lifelong ramifications, those of a global pandemic that happened once in a lifetime. And Lament grants permission to vent our emotions, even if it is against God. And I believe that Lament offers a place of grace. So the prayer exercise that I mentioned was one way to engage biblical Lament. Pamela and I are now going to each share different ways of engaging biblical Lament. I just want to mention to you again that the ministry context that I'm coming from is one that is poised for Lament. Our congregation has a child that has been battling cancer for three and a half years. We also have a large demographic of elderly within our congregation that are facing different losses and big changes that come with the transitions of aging. And on average here, we have 24 to 25 deaths per year in our congregation. So we are well poised for Lament, but even so, in general, we don't do a lot of lamenting together in our church. And you may find that to be true in your settings as well. We, on Sunday mornings, we may have occasion to do that within the structure of a worship service, maybe particularly with certain music and the pastoral prayer or a sharing time. But we also don't necessarily design our worship services to leave people in the pit. We tend to focus on hope and thanksgiving and joy, and that is good. We don't want to leave people in a low place necessarily. But in all the things that we're observing in our congregation here, in the community around us and this nation and the world, we felt here our leadership that we needed to slow down and we needed to focus on lament in our worship, especially, and also in other parts of our congregational life. So I'm just going to share a bit of how we're working at that here and hopefully it may be something that you can glean from this that you can apply in your own context or personally. So I mentioned in our worship that we decided to do a lament series and we entitled it How Long. And this was a six week series that ran from June until the first two Sundays of July. And that if that has led naturally into another series where we're focusing on injustice. And I in lament, there are often things that we are crying out to God about injustices that we see happening, or injustices that we're facing in our lives. So that one series flowed very well into this next series. Our congregation, our church board and our pastoral, our church board chair and our pastoral team leader shared a statement the Sunday following the death of George Floyd, a statement of lament for pandemic and racism. And this was a way of expressing to and with our congregation, our lament over these things that are happening. And but it was not only a way to just vent and lament those things, but also to call us beyond our reflection into action. We have also been working with our children and their families during this time. And we have done this, especially through Children's Time in our worship series. And my colleague, Talasha Kym Yoder, shared in one of our Children's Times about aggression cookies. And she shared of how her parents equipped her during a time of major transition as a child when she was very frustrated about a move. They equipped her with this recipe and how to work out her frustration and her sadness and her aggression in the making of these cookies. And she shared that process and the recipe with our children. I also shared in a Children's Time about what we're calling anger, anger bags. And we've been trying to help our children to learn about lament. And you'll see the faces of children in our congregation on these slides. I just want to say that we asked them to enact disappointment, sadness, anger, frustration. And I think only in one case was a child actually crying at the time when a photo was taken. So I just want to assure you that we did not induce suffering upon any of these children. But they found ways of expressing this. In the anger bags that I mentioned, we give the children tools to work with when they're feeling angry or frustrated or disappointed, things like paper and silly putty and pipe cleaners and puffy balls and squeezy balls, a number of different things, bubbles that can help them slow down their breathing and focus on something little when so many things and problems feel very big and overwhelming. So we encourage them to make their own anger bag and put those kinds of things in that will allow them to express those things to themselves and to God and maybe to their parents or other loved ones, those things that they need to cry out in a way that helps them to do that without hurting themselves or without hurting others. That idea of being angry, but not not sinning, not hurting others. But the overall emphasis was to let children know and give them permission to vent and to be to be angry if they need to be angry, but giving them tools to do that. We've also been sharing in our Sunday school classes and with our Stephen Ministry team and our other caregiving teams about lament and giving them permission to lament and also helping them to think about how they might hear the lament and join in the lament of those that they're caring for. There's a slide here about meet me on the porch. This is one thing that I've been doing in my role where weekly I gather with people, anyone from our congregation that wants to join in on a Thursday afternoon from my porch by Zoom. And the reason I mentioned that is just to give an example of when we as pastors are meeting with people now virtually and not so much in person, we are not just focusing on what is bringing them hope, what's sustaining them, what's bringing them joy. There are a lot of good things that are going on in people's lives and things that people are grateful for, but also giving permission for people to name what is challenging, what is causing them to lament. And that has been a powerful thing to give that space, especially during this time. I finally want to just mention lament as a form of intercessory prayer. Bob mentioned in his sharing that sometimes we're not feeling in this space. We may be doing very well. Or we're just, we may have our own issues, but we're feeling for other people around us. So lament can be a wonderful tool for intercessory prayer expressing on behalf of others our cries of against injustice or sadness for what's happening to someone. It can also communicate care when we share that we have had our own laments offered on behalf of another. It can help to build our empathy muscles, if you will. And it can also foster community. Bob's getting this video going. A couple of years ago in church, I had been asked to do a children's time to teach the basics of lament. And so during this six week series, I was invited to kind of reprise that. But at the time, since we were all kind of sheltered in place, our family was quarantined, our son had tested positive for COVID, so we were quarantined. So I rewrote the script as if my young friend here, that I was a guest on his fictional weekly talk show host, or talk show. And he interviewed me about lament. And so we had a lot of fun, fun with that. There are other variations to this actual timed writing prayer exercise that I did. That was a six minute timed writing prayer exercise. You can vary the times of the steps instead of two minutes for each step, maybe do five minutes or 10 minutes or an hour. Or maybe you do it as a three day prayer journey. And you live in one day with one step. And the next day, step two, and so forth. Many of us like to write, but some of us prefer drawing our prayers or working with clay, have two people write the prayer together. And so they're talking with each other as they identify what they're going to name. Compose a group prayer. So maybe it's a group of people who are writing their prayer. So this individual prayer exercise becomes more of a group experience. And in the same way, if you're leading this as part of a group, perhaps each individual would be willing to share it with the rest of the group. And so again, this becomes more of a communal experience. There are other ways to engage biblical lament, you know, composing songs, poems, short stories, conduct worship services with this lament format. Again, as Pamela mentioned, serving as a form of intercessory prayer. As I've led this prayer exercise with hundreds of people over the years, inevitably, I'd always have somebody say, Bob, I'm not feeling particularly angry or lamentful right now. How should I do this prayer exercise? And in those moments, I would invite them to think of a friend or another situation in their community or around the globe, where they would want to lament on their behalf and write it as an intercessory prayer, create videos of lament, tell about songs that describe their lament, make time for lament, recognizing loss during key turning points or other ritualistic events, study biblical characters of lament, tell stories of times of personal and corporate lament to kind of help normalize that this is okay to do. So thank you very much for your time and attention here today. We are very happy to engage your questions now at this time. So if you haven't yet done so, feel free to chime those in the Q&A feature and then Joel will read those off to us. So Joel. Yes, okay, here's a question. Should we speak of our lament to others or just to God? Should we accept it as simply too overwhelming for anyone other than God? How do we really know when to speak and when to remain silent? Good questions. You know, for me, when I pray lament, my prayers are directed to God, but again, there are those communal laments where there is the voice of people coming up. And as a faith community, I think it's very good for us to identify and recognize our own pains and our own losses with each other. So yes, the prayers are directed to God, but others can be part of that process. And we can still lament in ways that aren't prayerful or at least a prayer to God, we can still lament and share those with each other. Sometimes laments can be very personal as well. And so finding someone that you trust, if it's not something you feel like you can share with a group of people, finding a spiritual friend or spiritual director or just trusted friend that you can share with alongside sharing with God is helpful. Thank you. This question says the hardest thing seems to be being so out of control without real support. What else can you do in lamenting when you are alone where you are? I am a COVID refugee waiting to return home six months after leaving briefly in Asia. Do we need support from other people in this? I think we join in lament and feel for you in your situation. I would encourage sharing what you're lamenting and what feels out of control to you sometimes sharing that with a trusted person in whatever way you might have available to you right now even if you're alone to share that and have someone at least join you in prayer. I think along with that is definitely recognizing particularly people who are in one country right now and are from another country that perhaps you even feel more vulnerable to not having your community with you. And so if there are ways I know at the seminary right now we have a number of international students and so that's part of their educational reality of being here but then they're in a different country and then COVID happens and we have other friends too and people in our church are like that as well so yeah ideally finding a community or people to journey with you those compassionate advocates. And that out of control feeling I I'm recognizing it in my my own self but and also in others that I'm relating to that it's it's very draining. Things take take more effort right now than even just normal mundane things seem to take more effort than than normal and to just offer ourselves grace and yeah lots of grace at this time. There's another question. Do you have any advice for a person who is unsure of their own belief in God's goodness? Yeah I think by engaging lament in those three steps particularly step one is really all about that and so if I'm not sure of my own beliefs in God I can still write down those thoughts and feelings and maybe I find a friend or have a friend who can read that with me or that I can discuss through it but as you read the the Psalms of lament I I don't know that all those Psalmists always had high assurance of their belief in God or if God existed so for me that the Psalm 88 that really is just that crying out from the pit and and who knows where where where their prayers were directed I take a lot of grace in that. And sometimes allowing other people to hold that hold those questions for you um and that you know even when we have some doubt that's okay to have that um some sometimes people have not given us permission to the doubt but I see that as when we express that to God even though we're unsure of God hearing us or listening or engaging with us or God being good that it's still in the context of relationship and it's it's a it's coming from a place of faith that even when we're expressing doubt and anger and um frustration with God. Thank you here's another one how do we move into reorientation amidst the lament how do we sense the best timing of that well as I as I look at through those three steps I mean some of that timing is completely out of our control um this way for me there's frustration and grace with lament uh that's step one I don't know how long I'm going to be in that maybe I'm in there for several years before I get to step two where I can have that pivotal transformative moment where I start to reorient myself um you know I would want us to rush through that and get to it being all good but I don't think the bible assures us of of the timeline in my own timeline a couple of years ago I was in a particularly um quote dark chapter of my life that went on for several years and as I talked with my spiritual director about that um my head was glad for the knowledge of biblical lament but my heart did not always feel that and I couldn't rush through it something that I was just in one thing that my spiritual director has reminded me of as you talk about the head bob that our head our brains can move much quicker than our our hearts and souls and so sometimes we have to give ourselves space for that integration to happen and for our hearts to catch up with what we've been processing uh in our thoughts okay um this person says isn't contrition an important element of lament I didn't hear that in the examples given um that's a good question um I think for for the christian church um sometimes the historic christian church treated lament as if I did something wrong and therefore I should lament to god because of the wrongness that I did and so then we're also seeking forgiveness I think the biblical examples of lament and in my own life acknowledge that sometimes I am lamenting not because of anything that I did life happened and so the christian church hasn't always historically treated laments as laments they were more penitential psalms um and I think that's not quite the the the root of the biblical nature of lament but certainly there are things that I can do um lamentations daughter Zion acknowledged her own sinfulness in the midst of that and sometimes in lament I'm thinking of times where um the in the psalms where the psalmist may be saying I'm in a way I'm sorry god that I forgot this about you or that I forgot that you did this for me or you are with me and there's some contrition there in name when as a part of the remembering there's um contrition at times in the in the lament this person says thank you for mentioning art toward the end often it is hard to even know anymore what we are what all we are lamenting there are so many layers and art helps me to access the layers that I can't put towards yet can you expand on how to use art I am not an artist in that way a visual artist so this is uh not not a strength of mine but I do know that I appreciate that and I've walked with many people or have a lot of friends who use art I don't know what more to say other than um engaging lament but through the gifts that that you have through that so I'm a little bit limited there I I can respond a little bit um in that some of what I have felt a lot of anxiety during this time and just overwhelmed with the many different things that I feel I need to be praying for and doing and even though this may seem strange I'm finding some of my artistic and practical prayerful outlets through making masks um and doing the stitching and paying close attention to that or doing things like I'm folding origami piece of and some of that is just I can't even put like you are saying in the quest the person asking the question can't put things into words necessarily but in the doing and the forming of something something is taking shape and I feel like there's a release to God in in a way that doesn't have words but it's being formed in whatever I'm working with another question how do you suggest we might engage with friends who may be atheists as they are experiencing their particular grief I think they these may sometimes be situations that we can seek to accompany and allow them to express their grief without any speaking of God yeah um I think this this these three steps of lament or that kind of process um can certainly we can all our own human souls are crying out to vent to whatever and I think that can be named in that same way even if it's not directed to God so as a friend um being that compassionate advocate just as we all want to be that with each other in whatever times of stress and grief we find ourselves but the naming can be an extremely important part I'm naming to each other naming to whatever friends that I have and as a as the friend that's listening and receiving just being with is the most important part I think Bob gave the example earlier of being in a funeral visitation line and sometimes the best thing is to not even say anything but to just be with you know we see that in um Job's friends that they made some mistakes along the way in accompanying Job but uh just the presence receiving whatever it is the person's crying out about and not impressing our own sense of timing of when a person needs to move from disorientation to orientation but just accompanying okay I have one more question I'll put to you because we're really out of time and that is have you considered lament toward teaching social justice yeah absolutely I had mentioned um that that I think lament and naming the reality around us whether it's my reality or the the community or global reality naming that can be very prophetic to the rest of the community before my role at at AMBS I taught at a private christian liberal arts college and we had a peace and justice studies major and the professor of that major often invited me in as as he was teaching his class to talk about lament as a way for for self-care but also as a way of naming reality I don't have the book in front of me but there's a professor at North Park Seminary in Chicago um I want to say soon park but I can't remember the name his whole book is oriented towards that on biblical lament it's an excellent book um that is very much at the heart of that if you look at the prophets in the old testament there's a lot of lamenting um going on there of the injustices against the the poor and the downtrodden and or just wrongdoing that's been happening um yeah there's lots of examples of of that so uh somebody from AMBS just told me the name and the title of the book here real quick uh soon chang raw prophetic lament a call for justice in troubled times excellent book great thank you well bob and pamela thank you so much for all you've given us to think about as you can see there's a lot of engagement and a lot of interest in this important topic that gets precious little attention in our common life I think so thank you to both of you and um I just want to invite all of you who participated to check out our lifelong learning and degree programs online we have several distance friendly options including um six-week online short courses there's a short look of course on exploring peace and justice in the bible and also on worship and theology we also have full-length online courses that are available at 50 off to new and non-admitted students some of those courses are spiritual practices in prayer and scripture reading the bible amidst pandemic introduction to bible study tools christian attitudes to war peace and revolution and war thank you so much to all of you for joining us this afternoon for your uh questions your participation your interest been very good to be together thanks also to those who were offering support to the webinar sharyl's air ben perker suitor and brankraver this concludes the webinar