How Can I Keep from Singing?
As faculty and associates of Shalem’s Spiritual Guidance Program share our experiences of sitting with directees during our current political and socio-economic season, a line from Psalm 139 nudges its way into consciousness, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song / Upon an alien soil?” (Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 139:4)
During this current season, both directees and guides can feel as if they no longer recognize their homeland – that they are living in an alien land regardless of where they may find themselves on the political and/or socio-economic spectrums. Thus, as guides, we can find ourselves listening over and over to directees’ ongoing, passionate expressions of grief and/or sorrow, their laments, as we may be experiencing our own. It can be a great temptation to fall into critique, dialogue, and/or problem solving rather than the prayerful discernment of Spirit’s invitations.
This ongoing experience invites me to prayerfully wonder about the significance of being called to bear witness to directees’ laments within spiritual guidance sessions. Why might directees need to repeatedly bare their souls in lament with one who is prayerfully present? My lived experience is that in some mysterious way the one serving as guide serves as a trusted, living icon of the Divine Presence in whom we live, move, and have our being – that it is profoundly important for directees to experience another actually listening so that they know within the depths of their beings that they are truly being heard and loved. They need to share their laments with another so that, in so doing, they can experience hope signaling the possibility of new life. It’s as if hope is a function of lament just as silence is a function of sound. We cannot know one without the other. Thus, it is vitally important that guides remain prayerfully centered as listening icons rather than succumbing to the temptation to engage in mutual critique, debate, and/or problem-solving. Can it be that the act of engaging in lament actually births new life? I’m reminded of the first two stanzas of an old folk hymn:
My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation,
I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife,
I hear that music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?
In spiritual guidance, the guide has the opportunity to listen with another for the strains of hope that emanate from the directee’s lament and echoes them.