A lament for our times
Rev Bec Lindsay
October 31, 2023
This lament was written by Rev Dr Bec Lindsay, Uniting Church minister and sessional lecturer with United Theological College, and is shared with permission.
"I lament that we have forgotten how to talk to each other, how to listen across our difference, to the sounds of children playing, preferring instead the sounds of war."
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I lament.
I lament the screams of terror: blood, abduction, unknowing.
I lament the sound of bombs: bloody, fearful, indiscriminate.
I lament that the world community led us to this place,
year by year,
failing to create conditions for just peace.
I lament binary thinking that says only some lives should be mourned,
whichever lives you think this might refer to.
I lament that my Jewish neighbours are afraid,
deep-seated trauma rising up,
mourning communities and loved ones,
racism and antisemitism haunting them.
I lament that my Arab friends and family are afraid,
lumped together in rhetoric that names them terrorist,
as they watch loved ones pummeled,
racism and islamophobia hounding them.
I lament the backdrop of ‘NO.’
another country, my country,
refusing to look its own violence in the face,
preferring to pretend that blood, fear, and terror
have never lived here.
I lament that we have forgotten how to talk to each other,
how to listen across our difference,
to the sounds of children playing,
preferring instead the sounds of war.