On Good Friday evening, we were heartened and uplifted by a very different service at the beautiful Catholic church where our wedding was celebrated seven years ago. Unsure quite what to expect, we settled into a darkened, strangely silent church for Lamentations - a reflective prayer experience acknowledging our personal sufferings and those of the world.
The service turned out to be remarkably evocative, and for us felt very similar to powerful meditations on suffering and compassion that we have practised and led in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It began and ended with music composed by Nicole Nordeman, exquisitely sung and accompanied by piano. The opening song was Burnin'; the congregation seemed swept up into silent participation, actively engaged in their hearts and minds, not merely listening as spectators. This emphasis on what we would call "practice", the experiential rather than the didactic, seemed both unusual for a church service and highly effective.
Prayers and a psalm led to a one-line supplication sung repeatedly: "There is a longing in our hearts O Lord for you to reveal yourself to us". The haunting refrain, tinged with the inherent sadness of supposed separation, led directly into two personal accounts of deep grief elegantly told by those who suffered. This was followed by a slideshow of images of suffering around the world - poverty, famine, war and the other afflictions we so readily forget about or become inured to on our television screens. Set to evocative music by Danielle Rose, the congregation was drawn directly into the experience of empathy.
An answer-and-response sequence from scripture followed, and the main part of the service ended with another heart-opening song by Nicole Nordeman: Hold On.
The congregation was then invited to visit four stations within the church, each set up for the expression of individual prayers of sorrow: a room to make prayer-beads (one bead for each person desired to remember); a "wailing wall" for notes written to express each lament of the heart and placed within the rocks; the Pieta (statue of Mary holding the dead Jesus) to gaze upon; and the cross laid upon the floor, surrounded by candles, to venerate. Regardless of the extent to which one or more of these spoke particularly to an individual, they seemed to us a vital and effective way to bring sorrow into practice - in each case taking specific action with body and mind to acknowledge suffering and move into it, rather than our usual aversive reaction of trying to avoid such emotion at all costs.
The great religious traditions all recognise that through the recognition of suffering (our own and others), the development of empathy and the resultant natural arising of compassion, our hearts are opened and we draw naturally closer to that which we seek, which passes beyond all suffering. In our view, this interpretation of Lamentations by the Catholic church was a shining practical step in the right direction. We're so glad we went.
