Grieving through praise

This is an excerpt from my reflection this Sunday.

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Psalm 71, I think, encourages us to turn the corner from deep grieving through supplication alone to deep grieving that includes praise. Yes, deep grieving through praise. I am not presenting this to you as a theory or a theological concept. I am sharing with you out of personal experience. Grieving through praise comes about both out of your own will and strength as well as through the will and strength of the grace of The Divine Beloved. It is a powerful act of grieving. It is also an act of faith.

Grieving is a complicated emotion. Grieving through praise is even more complicated. Using praise as a means to express grief may seem contradictory and counter-intuitive. Personally I find the experience to be teeth-clenchingly difficult, cathartic, and strange. But ultimately it is grace-filled and rewarding in all my spheres of being – spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual. It is rewarding because I have given all of myself to the experience.
The psalmist is determined to praise The Holy “continually.” One of the lines that captured my heart years ago is verse 23, “My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have rescued.” A heart and soul that shouts for joy … that’s the image. The most common interpretation for this line is that the heart and soul are shouting because of the joy that they feel. I have not always read it this way, though. In a time of almost complete despair, I read this psalm and received a different interpretation. At the time I had no joy. I didn’t believe that I had been rescued from anything. I was trying to find some meaning and I came across this psalm. I read these words and knew that my lips and my soul could not shout because of joy, but I could shout for the joy. I could shout to attain the joy. My praises became the calling down of joy.

I won’t kid you … I didn’t feel joy right away. If I remember correctly I bawled through the whole thing. Since then my experiences have been quite varied. But to this day there are times when I shout and praise to call down joy – to call down a rescuing. It’s as if my decision to praise through the grief creates an opening within my soul to receive something from my Divine Beloved. I have to make a decision that I even want joy – and in times of grief sometimes joy just isn’t want you want. And that’s ok … for a time. I take the grieving process very, very seriously. I think it’s vital to totally fall apart sometimes. But I also think it’s vital to not get stuck in that place of brokenness. For me, praising through the grief helps me move beyond that place of brokenness to a place of hope and joy. Being able to be broken and then move from there to hope and joy requires a great amount of vulnerability. I mentioned expressing joy as being a vulnerable place last week too. Sometimes just opening up to the possibility for joy makes us feel vulnerable.