July has been a very full month, and my writing has
been focused elsewhere. From 2-12 July, I took part in a clergy consultation at
St George’s House, within Windsor Castle. Our theme was God: Some Conversations, considering how we speak about God in the
context of various challenges and potential opportunities facing us nationally
and globally, including the state of the Church, the future of healthcare and
the NHS, the arts, Brexit, democracy in a ‘post-truth’ Information Age,
organised criminal gangs, and environmental issues.
As part of my contribution to the consultation, I
presented a paper on lament. If you are interested, you can link to it here.
As it turned out, lament was a theme we returned to
over again in the course of our deliberations, noting that it was missing from
our public discourse. We also observed that evil often counterfeits good, and
that, in the absence of a robust practice of lament, the tabloid press holds
out a counterfeit version: endless daily tales of woe, framed by outrage and
identifying scapegoats to blame. In contrast, genuine lament acknowledges our
pain – and inability, at times, to rescue ourselves – and recognises the pain
of others, showing empathy; leads to an appropriate accepting of our own
responsibility, and repentance; and always, even in the most apparently
hopeless of situations, holds fast to hope.
I came to Windsor with a hunch that lament would be
one necessary and helpful way to frame God-conversations and came away with
that sense very much affirmed. Come the autumn, I will want to explore this
further.
