Lamenting the Moment

This past summer I had the chance to co-teach a short class on the Psalms, and my role in the class was primarily that of bringing examples of modern day artistic psalms to the group.  That's the interesting thing about psalms - they are all around us constantly, because the Psalms of the Bible are essentially just the cries of humanity in moments of joy, excitement, sorrow, pain, and conflict.  Life.  And isn't that what most art is - the cries of humanity in moments of joy, excitement, sorrow, pain, and conflict.

Whether religious or not, we all experience life, and we all experience the emotions inherent in it.  So the cries of the psalms are universal in a way, and have tended to speak to the hearts of a wide range of people throughout history.  I strongly believe that the psalms do not stop with those in the Bible.  The longing of people to express their emotions in a psalmic (I may have made that word up) way is something we see in all forms of art, but particularly in what we typically label 'secular'.  Quite often, modern day secular art is far more candid and uninhibited about the whole range of human emotion than 'Christian' art allows itself to be.

One type of biblical psalm is the "lament".  70% of the Psalms of the Bible are laments, and I dare say a good portion of art is as well.  Laments are raw, and vulnerable, and notable in their honesty about how painful life can be.  They describe personal brokenness in a gut-wrenching way, but also the sorrow of living in broken societies and systems.  They strive to give a voice to the powerless, and empathize with that pain.  They put words to the grief and suffering every human faces at some point.

This week in particular, my country has been in a state of lament.  We are feeling raw, and vulnerable, experiencing gut-wrenching personal brokenness over horrifying images of violent insurrection; sorrow over the broken systems and societal failings which have led us here.  In fact, many of us have been in a state of lament through much of the past year if we're honest, as our world has faced a deadly pandemic, new awareness of racial inequality, loss of connection with others, and so much more both personally and collectively.

It seems, then, appropriate to spend some time in artistic lament this month.  And today it feels right to start with Pablo Picasso, and his painting Guernica:

click to enlarge

Guernica is a compelling artwork on many levels.  Having seen it in person, it is a massive painting, and changes the atmosphere in the room.  Guernica is a scene of chaos and cruelty, depicting the horror of the Spanish Civil War and inspired by photos and eyewitness accounts of the bombing of the town of Guernica.  As many as 1,600 people were killed in this bombing, many of them women and children.  Only days later Picasso began his month-long work on this piece.  The painting is, without a doubt, a lament.

Now we could explore the symbolism and imagery of this painting for days and not exhaust all there is to say about it, so I won't do that here.  The groans of this lament are clear enough to see without explanation.  The mother in grief over her child ... the battered soldier in pieces in the foreground ... the man pleading with arms raised.  Guernica is a guttural cry of suffering and sorrow, horror and helplessness.

And yet.  I love "and yet"s.  There is surprising hope hidden in this psalm of lament, as is true of many of the biblical psalms of lament as well.  In the soldier's hand, alongside his sword, we can make out the faint image of a simple white flower - a symbol of peace.  The woman holding the oil lamp is commonly regarded as a symbol of the Spanish Republic, and in spite of the light bulb at the center of the painting, the lamp is actually the source of light in this scene.  An injured woman looks up at it in longing.  This light is a source of hope in a broken moment.

As I look at the images which have come across my screen this week, or this past year, I wonder where the white flowers and oil lamps are.  They must be there.  Maybe I need to look closer.  Or maybe I haven't finished sitting in the lament just yet.  There is no shame in being honest about the emotions of pain and turmoil we may feel right now, or at any time.  It's a part of life, it's a part of faith, and we can't ignore it anymore than the psalmists could.