Lament for the Christchurch Mosque Attacks

I’ve had folk get in touch wanting to know what words or music they can use to respond to the unspeakable violence that occurred in Christchurch on Friday. I confess I am numbed by this act, and do not have anything new at hand to offer. A dear friend text me last night saying she and her gathering were singing my song, ‘How Long O Lord.’

If you haven’t heard it, here it is. It might be what you and your community need right now to express our bewilderment to God – and to call God to act with justice.

Another song that might be of use as a reflective piece called, ‘Hallowed be Thy Name.’ I wrote this with some friends back in 2010, trying to find my way towards lament. It may give voice to some of the feelings for revenge and powerlessness that members of your congregations may be experiencing.

Here is a prayer I wrote a couple of years ago for a community in a very difficult space – it may have something to offer into this space. You are welcome to rework it as needed:

I have tried to write a hundred eloquent prayers,
Giving voice to our pain and to your healing grace.
But today I can find none. I confess I am bereft. But I will not be silent.
Do not forsake us O God.
A dozen beginnings become a dozen dead ends, as my prayers pool at my feet. And all I have to offer you for myself, for my church, and for my world, are tears of confusion and grief.
Do not forsake us O God.

You O God are beauty and wholeness, and you deserve to be loved better than I can muster. You deserve to receive words and lives of cadence and grace, but my heart is heavy, my feet are like lead, and my voice can find no song for a time like this.
Do not forsake us O God.

Yet as discordant and despairing as it may sound,
I will give you ​this voice,
for I have no other,
and even as I pray you are delivering me from the tomb of disempowered silence.
For this ugly groan is a sharing in God’s Spirit, it is being formed on the lips of Christ, and whispered in the ear of the Most High.

We are not forsaken. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Here’s a little song I wrote for the Mark Illustrated Gospel Project last year which may speak to this time. It names the grief of our world, and reality of loss, but holds that alongside the unflinching promises of God to see this world through to redemption.

A song written with my friend Adrian Taylor, a prayer of intercession when we have no words of our own, only ‘sighs and silence.’

Finally, here is a song I wrote last year for some friends in a dark place. It can be sung congregationally, but you are also welcome to use the recording as a reflective piece. A note that the recorded version is a little different to the notated version, it got workshopped and I haven’t been back to rework the recording yet.

Grace and peace as you shepherd your communities through this time, always in the sure presence of the Great Shepherd.