Of late I have sought for a language of lamentation
Out beyond the quarrels of our time
One that grounds us in a daring belief
That there is a new way of speaking of loss and grief
One captured by a prophetic imagination
Able to hold both chaos and hope together
Rooted in covenant and tradition
While insistent we give rise to the new
These voices and their vernacular
Are curators of a brand new language
Completely uncredentialed and unsilenced
By petty ecclesial or political powers
These trickster poets of prophecy willingly admit
They do not know how
The world is going to be
Or what will survive
For while one world is vanishing
Another appears before our very eyes
But it is clear our consumptive naming
Is weak and unable to describe the turning
As we are being called to imagine the world differently
Both about the loss and about the newness
So where are the songs and prayers
Of sadness and loss
Prospect and promise?
All we have now is rage or bombast
Even our very sense of time
Appears organized against history
As there is a disdain of memory
A ridicule of hope
As all things are held clumsily
In an urgent and exhausting now
Unwilling to endure a formative brokenness
We try to buy our assumed prosperity
Like some time share
So ill-equipped for loss
We keep denying
What is happening to us
As we are so new to this vulnerable place
We are unable to lament or dream
It is as though the ordered world
Is being taken away from us
And we are obsessed
With finding the perpetrators of this crime
For the world we trusted in
Is vanishing before our eyes
And the world that is coming
Feels like a threat
So along with the trickster poets and prophets
I await the illusive and audacious language
Of miracles and wonder
Listen intently for the stories taking shape
And regard this profound unease as a holy thing
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