Lent is a time for lamentations, self-assessment

The man tosses and turns all night. He feels like a bucket that’s been kicked over and spilled. His heart is a “blob of melted wax in my gut.” He rails at God, asking “Why did you dump me miles from nowhere?”

The man is surely depressed and likely suffering from an ulcer, too. Plenty of medicine for both. The insomnia? No problem there, either. Sleep medication will promise to relieve that kicked-over-bucket sensation.

The distraught man’s words can be found in Psalm 22, in a version from “The Message: the Bible in Contemporary Language.”

Paul Seebeck photocopied Psalm 22 for me last week. Paul, the pastor at Knox Presbyterian Church on Spokane’s North Side, was working on his Ash Wednesday service. Tonight, he’ll preside over his first one as an ordained minister.

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent in many Christian faith traditions, is often associated with the church season when people give things up, such as alcohol. But that superficiality belies Lent’s deeper currents. That’s why I visited Paul.

In 2002, when Paul and I were in a theology class together at Gonzaga University, he presented a paper on the importance of lament. The importance of dwelling in grief and despair. The importance of expressing deep sorrow, disappointment and even anger.

“I read somewhere that the most destructive thing in any relationship is for one person to stop talking about what is bothering them, to stop voicing their concerns,” Paul said. “Scripture is full of conversations of people demanding to know where God is in the midst of loss and fear.”

In fall 2002, Paul was experiencing both. He’d lost his job as a broadcast journalist. He felt called to be an ordained minister in the Presbyterian faith tradition, but he was working toward that in a Jesuit institution, not the usual route. So he felt fear that his dream might never become reality.

Paul’s personal narrative played out following Sept. 11, 2001, a time of universal lament in the United States. How did it happen? Why did it happen? Some people turned to the famous line from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

During the past four years, Paul worked through his personal lament. He was ordained Oct. 2, 2005, at age 47. He is settling now into the church that called him to service.

He seems at home in his office, surrounded by books and photographs, and on the computer screen, the outline of his first Ash Wednesday service.

“Lent is a time of assessment,” he said. “A time to ask, ‘How does what I say and believe match who I am?’ If there’s a disconnect, that’s the opportunity to do some reflecting, some lamenting.”

Paul and I reflected together on our culture, which often values relentless cheeriness. Antidepressants have been a boon to those who truly need them, but what do we do with the studies that show that therapy – a modern avenue for lament – can be just as important as the pills?

We don’t get much permission anywhere to relish sad days or savor the somber moods that mark life passages. Those who grieve the death of loved ones are expected to snap out of it in a few months. Yet studies show that widows and widowers often don’t feel right with the world for six years – and sometimes longer.

These were the things Paul and I talked about in anticipation of today, Ash Wednesday. We read over Lamentations, the Old Testament text that describes a world of starving children, weeping widows, enslaved people.

Not light reading. But this is the value of Lent. And the value of any time taken, regardless of spiritual beliefs, to ponder feelings of discouragement and estrangement.

And as Paul pointed out to me, hope dwells inside lament, because the conversation is going on, no matter how raw the words expressed. And Easter, after all, is on the horizon.