Learning to Stay and See

Yesterday we practiced the discipline of lament. We took deep breaths, several steps back, and realized together that reconciliation isn’t something we can “do,” measure, and check off our lists. It is a journey that requires personal transformation and growth.

American culture peculiarly hides its pain—we hide sorrow, loneliness, poverty, illness, disability, the elderly. As Jeremiah says, we deal lightly with the wounds of our people. We somehow delude ourselves into thinking that we can only be effective ministers and care-givers if we wear the sheen of success, if we are in a position of power or competency.

Emmanuel Katongole reminded us that our American ways of hiding pain and erecting a façade of self-confidence is devastating to the process of reconciliation. In fact, he pointedly stated, “There can be no reconciliation without lament.”

Sometimes, the journey of reconciliation means we truly see, and we don’t look away from the world’s pain. We stay with the pain, we dwell there for a while, and like Rachel weeping for her children, we refuse to be consoled.

Some of us wept together yesterday. We wept for our own broken bodies and hearts, for our broken families and neighborhoods, for unfathomable injustice. And we sat with the pain, even as the silence stretched long.