every lament is a love song

In his book, 'Lament for a Son', (which I commend to anyone who wants to think about grief and God and love) Nicholas Wolterstorff tells us that 'every lament is a love-song.'

I wrote a song to accompany my final self-evaluation for my Clinical Pastoral Education program. It's pasted below.

Every lament is a love song: a song about cpe.

What kind of God are you that you want my worship
What kind of God are you that you want my prayer
Who am I to criticize your method?
Who am I to question your care?

Did you promise me abundance?
Did you promise me light?
I'm not getting a dawning.
I'm getting walking with me through the night.

I've been asking, all the old questions.
Children dying, all of the time.
I want you God, to get here and transform us
I want you God, to make the verses rhyme

I want you, to heal my patients
I want you to end the war
I want you, but that's not what you tell me
All you promise is that you will show up.

I've stopped looking to you for victory
I've seen too much pain, for a time
I'm not looking to you for abundance
O God my God I'm looking to you for enough.

Sometimes, I don't think you are trying
When the world seems like one big bruise.
But I believe that you cry the hardest;
This is some kind of awful good news

Bridgey stuff

One bed's laughing, one bed's cursing, one bed's crying
All together
One at a time

I believe you are there, in the blood, in the bread
I believe that you move, in the wind and in the wine

This world feels like missing a lover
This world feels like dancing in a cast
All I can give them is some love and space and presence
I just show up; I believe that's all you ask.

I can't offer them abundance
I can't give them any truth or joy or light.
Somehow, I just give them what you promise.
I show up, and walk with them through the night.

It's not much, this grace we have to share.
It's not much, but it's enough, it's enough.

(repeat last two lines.)

-I think there might be another verse in me, about how we show up, and a few other people show up, and they're never perfect, and often they're deeply flawed, but their showing up enables our continuing showing up. So, yeah. I'll put up a link to a recording if I ever get that together. I told Beth that you can just sing it to the tune of Yankee Doodle, but that was a lie.

love-and-lament,
david

on providence

I've never been much for providence. Especially after reading Calvin this semester- it just seems to end up with too many terrible consequences, to imagine that God is controlling everything.

And then today. Today I went up to my floor, intent on starting my rounds, when the charge nurse directed me to a room. "She wanted a Bible," she said, "But she's going to surgery right away." I started to go downstairs for a Bible, but figured I had better go to the room first.

I introduced myself to the youngish woman on the bed. "Oh, are you here to pray with me?" she said. There was already a Bible in the room. As we began to pray, my beeper went off, but I put it aside for the time being. Then, together, we prayed fiery prayers, about God's presence and King-ness, God being on the throne in the operating room and showing the surgeon His power. She led, mostly.

When I finished, I wanted to offer her my best wishes for her surgery. "Well," I said, "I hope-"

She interrupted me: "What'd you say? Hope? What's hope? Hope is doubt. We don't doubt, we know. We know that God is in control, and God led you here, and God will lead me through surgery. His will be done. He predestined you to come through that door, and it's all his will."

"Okay," I said, smiling. "Take care."

Now, as you might know, this is not really my theology. But I am trained to accept patients where they are, problematic theology and all, and to not shoot holes in their precious resources.

But it was time to answer that page. I had heard at lunchtime about the stillborn infant, the deceased child whose parents wanted a blessing. Now, according to my page, they wanted a Baptist.

I was the only Baptist chaplain in the hospital at the time. So I got paged. And I went.

I've never done an infant blessing, dedication, or baptism before. I once blessed a storage locker. But they wanted a baptist. And so I showed up in their hospital room, the dad, and the cousin, and the mother, holding her beautiful tiny tiny red red child. "A____ R_____." she said.
"A____ R______. That's a beautiful name." I said.
And we gathered together and together we prayed a blessing on A____ R_____. I stumbled over my words, and after I left I thought of all kinds of things I could have added. I started to say to her, "I bless you," but I went back and said "we bless you." But together we blessed her, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God Mother of us All.

And the family was thankful. And the mom wanted a picture. And so there's a picture or two, there on the hospital's disposible cameras, of me, and of mom, and of A_____ R_____. And they didn't want anything else from me. But they had wanted a blessing, and they wanted it from a Baptist.

Now, you also know that I'm not really one with a great love of my denomination. Don't get me wrong, I love Baptists and I love Baptist theology, but I also love all kinds of thing about all kinds of denominations. I probably wouldn't be Baptist if I didn't live next to Carrie Broadwell, freshman year. If I hadn't been randomly assigned next to her room in the dorm, I wouldn't have asked her what a cool church in town was. And she wouldn't have gone with me to Peace Community Church, the Baptist church she was raised in and had left for a few years.

So, through complete happenstance, I ended up a Baptist. I love being a Baptist- I love the history, and the contemporary diversity. But when Alicia Renee's parents needed a Baptist, I was around. And they got a Baptist.

Now, I definitely don't believe in providence. Not in the predestination, God controls it all.

But I believe that God has some tricks up her sleeve. And one of the tricks I'm caught up in came to fruition today. And it was sad and beautiful and important and sacred.

Peace be with you.

david

ps- I sent this out as an email to a few folks before posting it. I got this great few lines back from another David, a pastor-type who's a fellow member of my church in chicago:
"I don't believe in providence either; what I believe in is improvisation. And our God, she is a mighty improviser. An Ella Fitzgerald, a Doc Watson, a John Coletrane, and you sound like a most eloquent axe in her hands."

why i carry my bible

On Monday I'll start my fourth week of CPE. Clinical Pastoral Education, that is, a kind of hospital chaplaincy internship. It's a funny job. I tell people it's like getting the entire spectrum of human existence in an hour. Every hour.

Tonight I was carrying my Bible around as I got called to rooms, or as I was just walking the hall. It's kind of a funny thing to do. When I'm doing an 'on-call' shift, and I don't have a list of patients to try to visit, it's generally all I carry as I walk around.

Here's why I carry my Bible:

-It feels appropriate in its ambivalence. Sometimes when I walk into a room, I get sheer joy. Other times, it's sheer despair. The Bible has both of these, and has been both of these to me. It's like carrying around the aformentioned 'entire spectrum of human existence.' Maybe I'll encounter something tremendously liberating when I walk in that room. Maybe something tremendously oppressive. Probably some combination of the two. Similarly with opening the Bible.

-It's a way to carry my churches. Someone suggested that I say, "I'm from the hospital," when folks ask what church I'm from. I've decided I don't like that answer, though I tell folks I work for the hospital. But I also tell folks which church I go to. My tradition supports a ministry that is authorized and empowered by a local congregation. So it feels really good to carry a Bible that was given to me as a gift by Hurlbut Church when I graduated from the third grade. It reminds me that my authority, my ability, my grace comes from God, but comes through them, and through my other churches.

-It's a good identifier. I don't always have a clipboard, and I don't wear a uniform or a stethescope. But to be that guy, the one who carries that crazy, enfuriating, transformative, stupid old wonderful book- that's a good way to be known, a good way to be identified.

-I visited a woman while I was doing my rounds. She was worried and confused, and didn't really know where she was or what was going on. She was just really anxious, and nothing I said could console her. I asked if I could read to her. I read her the 23rd Psalm, and she repeated every line as I read it. I could see her whole self relax to those familiar words.

Sing them over again to me indeed.