Grief and Lament

We all experience grief in life—there are so many losses—a loved one dies, we lose a job, a divorce happens. And many of us are grieving right now as the world seems to be becoming undone.

It felt right to write about grief and lament during Holy Week, just prior to Easter. This is a time in which Christians remember Jesus' suffering and death. Somehow following along with Christ's last days on earth feels more significant in 2025. Perhaps because there seems to be so many losses and dyings happening around the world.

Each of us suffers and grieves in our own unique ways. I’ve grieved a lot in my six decades of life. Losses have piled one on top of another, somehow each connected to the other.

I’ve danced, walked, journaled, talked, written poetry, drawn, and cried my way through each loss.

But I didn't consider using lament as a spiritual practice until one of my loved ones died suddenly in 2017. The loss was so devastating that I couldn’t ignore or deny it.

Prior to this, lament hadn't been something that I'd naturally fallen into. Because lament meant that I'd have to face reality and move into the truth of the loss, rather than internalizing, numbing out, or pretending that it hadn’t happened. It meant feeling and expressing hard feelings such as deep sadness, anger, outrage, frustration, and guilt.

Many Psalms of the Bible are personal lamentations, (see Psalms 5, 13, 22, 31, 51, 77, 86, 140). These Biblical Poems begin with complaints to the Holy One and expressions of raw emotions, including disappointment in and rage at God. But, after the Psalmists poetically express their feelings, they somehow always move into a deeper trust in the Divine. And they even express praise and/or thanksgiving.

Certainly, the times we are living in, with all its pain and anguish, is inspiring modern poets and musicians into creating art that can assist us in lamenting and surviving the chaos, (e.g. Sanctuary by Carrie Newcomer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjOioWTVAl4 ).

The perennial poetic wisdom of the Biblical Psalms of lament can assist us in dealing with the barrage of losses we are experiencing in 2025.

Listening to lament-inspired music, reading the Biblical Psalms of lament, and even writing our own lament-filled psalms can bring us closer to the Holy. And provide a pathway for us so that we are better able live out our own suffering and the suffering of the world.

Today’s video guides you into creating your own psalm of lament. The process is based on recommendations from Teresa Blythe, Christine Valters Paintner, and Betsey Beckman, [1], [2].

If the process doesn’t feel right for you, then you might rewrite a Biblical Psalm of lament that resonates in your heart. Afterwards, you may choose to speak it to God—either aloud or in the silence of your heart.

1. Teresa Blythe, 50 Ways to Pray: Practice from Many Traditions and Times, Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 2006, (27, 28).

2. Christine Valters Paintner and Betsey Beckman, Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction, Morehouse Publishing, New York, 2010, (160-161).

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Maureen Fowler, a beloved spiritual mentor.