the women of jerusalem weep for jesus
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station 8: lament
Hear our prayers
For all who’ve been told to stop crying.
For all who’ve been told their tears
were ugly, shameful, ridiculous.
For all who’ve sucked back tears.
Who’ve held them
in their locked hearts.
For all who cannot stop crying.
For all who don’t know
how holy their tears are.
Hear our lament.
BLESSING FOR THE BROKEN HEARTED
by Jan Richardson
Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.
Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.
Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—
as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,
as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,
as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.
