Jerusalem is destroyed, flattened. It’s in habitants hauled away into exile. The city is “shamed by her destruction.” How do you even begin to speak about this? An impossible situation in which it seems no one cares and there is no one to listen - not even the Divine? In this elegy, the poet uses the picture of a woman - a widow who is alone. Saying things like, “there is no one to comfort her” and the widow saying, “No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit.” And the isolation only seems to grow. Because Jerusalem is destroyed no pilgrims come to celebrate the feasts, “The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed festivals.”
This is perhaps the hardest, most intense of the five poems. It finishes without hope, only a request; without light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, only a hope for some sort of revenge. What do we do in these kind of moments? We cry out. We lament. We lay it all out there, even if we are not wholly sure God is listening.
January 21, 2024: Wake Up! - Hannah Thom
January 14, 2024: The Pain of Reconciliation - Michael Hidalgo
January 7, 2024: It’s Not Going to be Like That - Paula Williams
December 24, 2023 (Christmas Eve): Right Where You Cannot See It - Michael Hidalgo.
December 17, 2023: The Lack of Denial - Michael Hidalgo
December 10, 2023: And Then I See a Darkness - Hannah Thom
December 3, 2023: The Name of the Moment - Michael Hidalgo
November 19, 2023: Ravens and a Suggestion of Wild Flower - Maggie Knight
November 12, 2023: Saving, Storing and Dying - Michael Hidalgo
November 5, 2023: The Inside on the Outside - Hannah Thom
October 29, 2023: A Not So Lovely Dinner Conversation - Michael Hidalgo
October 22, 2023: Baptism - Michael Hidalgo
October 15, 2023: This is a Movement - Michael Hidalgo
October 8, 2023: Parts of a Whole - Jonathan Merritt
October 1, 2023: Hand It Over - Michael Hidalgo
September 24, 2023: Eyes Wide Open - Keri Ladoucer
September 17, 2023: The Only Sign - Michael Hidalgo
September 10, 2023: Who is the Enemy? - Michael Hidalgo
September 3, 2023: That Sounds Like a Guarantee - Michael Hidalgo
August 27, 2023: How Do We Pray? - Keri Ladoucer
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