Busted Tambourine

“We’ve forgotten how to grieve,” she said. This was her indictment on American life after over ten thousand hours as a therapist.

We chase one mountaintop after another and rarely slow down long enough to listen to our internal compass. Neuroscience teaches us that our brains our wired so that we have to feel it to heal it. But allowing oneself to feel can be terrifying.

Have you ever felt alone? Is there a season or even a longer patch of time where you felt abandoned? The world that once sparkled with possibilities is now a bleak road that never ends. Where is God? Could it be that God is dead? Your being shudders at the thought.

Shortly after Albus Dumbledore died, J.K. Rowling described the song of Fawkes the Phoenix as “a stricken lament of terrible beauty.” In the movie Inside Out, It isn’t until 11-year-old Riley cries out that she misses her old life that she can begin a new life. Jesus’ screams from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

What do we learn from this troubling scene? God endured not only the physical pain but also emotional abandonment. His shrill cry reminds us that we’re not alone. God’s strength is found in weakness.  God invites us to pay attention to the sorrow, the ache, and the injustice and to name it. It’s not on the mountaintop where one finds God but only in the valley of tears. From the sorrow of death, new life comes.

This is the paradox of Christian faith. Don’t numb nor hide nor ignore your internal but instead put words to the pain, voice the fears, cry aloud and wait. I wrote the poem “busted tambourine” because I’ve felt alone more times that I’d like to admit. 

May this poem give you permission to name the pains, to face the fears, and remind you of the importance of grieving, and to find new and flourishing life.