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

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.