lament – The Raynville Rambler

My eyes are dim with weeping (and other prayers)

Monument to Thomas Sainsbury – St Mary’s church, Market Lavington
© Mike Searle and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.

Yesterday I combined two short prayer responses in one comment. We have three more for the rest of the week (numbers 207 to 209 in the Sing Praise book), equally short, so I’m combining them too.

207 (Tuesday) is a setting by John Harper of the response familiar to all Church of England regulars: ‘Lord, in your mercy hear our prayer’. 209 (Thursday) is by Paul Inwood and is a cantor/response chant: ‘We ask you, Lord / Listen to our prayer’, repeated one tone lower. Either of these would be used after each section of congregational prayers.

208 (Wednesday), with words by John Bell to a tune by Alison Adam, is also a cantor/response chant, but is slightly longer, and also quite different in tone. In fact it is achingly plaintive in its words and music. The cantor wails ‘My eyes are dim with weeping and my pillow soaked with tears’, the response being ‘Faithful God, remember me’. This is not so much intercession as lament.

Previous generations are sometimes criticised for being over-sentimental in their use of imagery such as the one above. Church monuments like this one from the late 18th century often feature women weeping over a tomb or urn covered in drapes (similar to pillows, I suppose). But sometimes in grief or pain we do find ourselves literally weeping into the pillow, either for our own situation or that of a loved one, and there seem to be no adequate words with which to ask God to help. These words will do, and
this chant could be used by the individual lamenting over some great crisis in their life. Asking God to ‘remember me’ is asking him not to ignore my plight or leave me helpless.

Alternatively, this could be used corporately, perhaps at a funeral, remembrance service or or if the theme of the service leads itself to intercession for people who might not be known to us by name but with whose suffering we want to empathise: flood or famine victims, survivors of a disaster, etc. But like strong medicines it should only be used sparingly. ‘Lord, in your mercy hear our prayer’ will suffice for most occasions.

The next blog in this series will therefore be on Friday as we look at the ‘O antiphons’ for the last week of Advent.

How long, O Lord, will you forget?

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “How long, O Lord, will you forget” by Barbara Woollett, a setting of Psalm 13. As a psalm of lament it is unsurprisingly set to a tune in a minor key. After a series of hymns expressing God’s love for us and ours for him, his everlasting Word, his call to follow him, the beauty of this world and the promise of the world to come, this one comes as a shock. “No tokens of your love I see, your face is turned away from me, I wrestle with despair”. And that’s just the first verse. It goes on to ask “When will you come to my relief? My heart is overwhelmed with grief, by evil night and day”.

The fact is that we all have times when we don’t experience the love of God in every flower and birdsong, as yesterday’s hymn put it. In fact quite the opposite, God can seem deliberately absent just when we need him most. It’s at those times that real faith draws on our own past experience and that of others to know that God is present, even if we can’t detect him. The third verse expresses that, as without any suggestion that God has replied to the earlier cries of “How long will you forget and forsake me?” the singer says “I find that all your ways are just, I learn to praise you and to trust in your unfailing love”. That ‘learning to praise and trust’ requires practice, like any skill that we wish to master.

From the deep places

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is Timothy Dudley-Smith’s “From the deep places, hear my cry”, a setting of Psalm 130. The full text is available online.

Lent seems to attract psalm settings, perhaps because it’s the part of the Bible where there is the largest amount of honesty with God about our fears and failings, which is where the Lent journey starts.

There are also, it seems, more ‘evening hymns’ here, again perhaps because evening worship tends to be more reflective, including looking back at the day and seeing what we could have done better (the fashionable word for this is ‘examen’). Psalm 130 is one of the Bible passages traditionally associated with the late evening service of Compline. In the more literal translation it begins “Out of the depths have I cried to you, Lord”, but TDS’s version is close to that. The second half of that first verse moves on logically to ask God not to keep account of our failings.

The second verse acknowledges God’s glory that we cannot behold without the grace that also comes from God himself. The third asks him to draw near to me in love, and the last one reminds us that God’s love acts like a night-watchman through the night to protect us from harm. As we have heard today that it will be at least another four months before Covid-19 restrictions on movement in England will be fully lifted, the importance of committing ourselves into God’s care is all the more important to our mental and spiritual health. This pattern of reflection, confession, absolution, receiving God’s love, and committing ourselves to his care through the night is matched by most forms of night prayer.

Musically, this is another ‘long metre’ hymn with several possible tunes to be found in any hymn book. The suggested one is ‘Breslau’, a 15^th century German melody (the first line certainly has resonances of later Lutheran hymns). When John sang this at morning prayer, he sensibly changed the first line to “From deepest places…” to align the linguistic stress with the musical one.

The call of the lamb

A brief diversion today from my 2021 “Sing Praise” project. On most Saturdays I haven’t selected a hymn or song although that will change shortly when we get to Lent. But today I took part in an online ‘quiet day’ with a couple of devotional talks, group discussion and times for personal prayer, all focused around the themes of ‘lament’ and ‘praise’ found in Psalm 57, which is believed to have been written by David in a cave while being pursued by his rival Saul.

The idea of being stuck in a cave fearing what’s outside obviously resonates with the Covid-19 lockdown. After the first session on ‘lament’ we were encouraged to take the words and themes of the psalm and come up with something creative – words, music, art or craft. My meditation resulted in the following poem. It was inspired by the photo shown here on the handout for the day. The viewer is looking out from the narrow cave and there is a sheep looking in. Jesus is referred to as both the Shepherd and the Lamb of God, and that is the poem’s starting point…

Look up, look out from your death-dark cave
And see me standing here.
You are not alone when you mourn and moan,
I have come to allay your fear.

Did you think I would stay in those pastures green
On the other side of the dale?
No, with sure-footed skill I have climbed your hill
To hear your woeful tale.

The enemy shall not find you here,
Nor lions enter your cave.
For I suffice as the sacrifice,
It is I who have come to save.

The Most High God comes down to earth
As a gentle, listening lamb.
I heard you bleat, and have come to meet
You where you are. I Am.