Sandy Berry
Seminarian, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley
Final Project – Course on Moral Injury and Soul Repair
A Liturgy of Lamentation and Hope
09/01/14
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an
end; they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:21-23
INTRODUCTION
As a lifelong Disciple, my experience of Easter began on Palm Sunday, a jubilant
reenactment of Jesus entry into Jerusalem, followed by Maundy Thursday, a seminal
recreation of Jesus’ institution of communion, which finally led to Easter Sunday, a
triumphant celebration of the resurrection. Good Friday, while acknowledged and
referred to, was not an occasion for worship or ceremony, at least in my Disciples
church and the concept of Holy Saturday was entirely absent. In my experience, while
an empty cross hung over the communion table as sure promise of forgiveness and
future reconciliation, the primary focus of our worship life was the remembered life of
Jesus and our own efforts to follow in his footsteps.
As an adult, I occasionally found my way into a Catholic church on Good Friday,
fumbling through the foreign liturgy primarily through mimicry of the people around me.
Nonetheless, the solemnity and order of this ritual observance created a sense, on my
part at least, that some degree of necessary attention had been given to the sorrow,
suffering and death of Jesus. Although, I no longer need to find a Catholic church in
which to observe Good Friday services, Holy Saturday services are much less common.
In considering the components of a Disciples' based liturgy that attends to the silence of
scripture between death and resurrection, I found a clear intersection between the
possibilities of a Holy Saturday service and the concerns raised by the topic of moral
injury and soul repair. To that end, the purpose of this paper is to provide both context
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for and explanation of a Holy Saturday service for a Christian congregation. “Moral
injury feeds on despair…destroys meaning and forsakes noble cause as it sinks
warriors into states of silent, solitary suffering, where bonds of intimacy and care seem
impossible.”1 Therefore, I propose a liturgy of lamentation that moves from despair to
hope both for veterans who suffer from moral injury, and for the congregations to which
they belong.
WHY HOLY SATURDAY?
Many veterans returning to their home communities and congregations have
“lived through life-altering spiritual trauma and will find a quest for peace and
reconciliation to be more difficult than fighting the war.”2 The church, which claims a
ministry of healing and reconciliation to the world, bears a part of society’s collective
responsibility for these returning veterans. Many books and other resources highlight
the need for the church to provide extensive services to these returning veterans.
However, neither this paper nor the proposed Holy Saturday service pretends to offer a
once and for all approach to veteran care or for those who suffer from moral injury.
Nonetheless, the service is designed to reflect the needs of veterans for religious ritual
that allows room for processing the suffering and grief of moral injury. While
acknowledging “some soldiers emerge from war spiritually intact…many more return
with a deep sense of brokenness and despair.”3 Therefore, the proposed service
acknowledges brokenness and despair as it attempts to formalize and ritualize a
pathway through these feelings for veterans as well as others who suffer from sorrow
1
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriel Lettini, Soul Repair: Recovering From Moral Injury After
War (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012), xvi.
2
John Sippola, Any Blumenshine, Donald A. Tubesing and Valerie Yancey, Welcome Them
Home - Help Them Heal (Duluth, MN: Whole Person Associates, Inc.), 5.
3
John Sippola, et al., 42.
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and grief.
MORAL INJURY
“I knew that something had forever changed inside me, I felt a hole in me that
had no bottom, an infinite void that could never be replenished.”4
“Moral injury names a deep and old dilemma of war,”5 with symptoms which
overlap and sometimes mirror those of PTSD, including anger, depression, anxiety and
isolation. The distinctive features of moral injury “sorrow, grief, regret, shame,
alienation and guilt,”6 emanate from a soldier’s action, which violates their own core
moral beliefs. In response to this violation “they may judge themselves as worthless
and others as untrustworthy…they may abandon the values and beliefs that give their
lives meaning and which guided their moral choices.”7 Veteran Camilo Mejia describes
moral injury as the “pain I inflicted upon the very core of my being when I took
something I could never give back...a pain that redefined my life…that transformed who
I was, and continues to transform me.”8
PURPOSE OF SERVICE
The purpose of this service is to create a liturgy of lamentation which addresses
the devastation that results as a “consequence of violating one’s conscience, even if the
act was unavoidable or seemed right at the time.”9 These devastating consequences
cannot be fully addressed within a one hour worship service held once a year, however
a consideration of the needs of those who suffer from moral injury served to guide the
4
Camilo E. Mejia, Healing Moral Injury: A Lifelong Journey, 2011,
http://forusa.org/fellowship/2011/winter/healing-moral-injury/11606 (accessed June 30, 2014).
5
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriel Lettini, Soul Repair: Recovering From Moral Injury After
War (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012), xv.
6
Rita Nakashima Brock, "Moral Injury and Soul Repair " (Berkeley, CA, July 2014).
7
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriel Lettini, xv.
8
Camilo E. Mejia.
9
Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriel Lettini, xv.
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choices made in the planning of this service. Within the service, as the participants are
allowed space to grieve the death of Jesus, they may also find room to grieve their own
sorrows and loss. In this context, the service makes room for veterans to continue to
unravel the “compounding realities of multiple overlapping losses experienced by
returning military members, of comrade, job, service to others, family and weapons of
war.”10 However, as the service is designed for use within the community of the local
church, the liturgy seeks to open opportunities for all who suffer from grief and loss to
find some measure of healing and hope.
To accomplish this, the liturgy moves forward in an orderly progression through
themes designed to enable the participants to engage individually, but also in
community with this day, which lies on the cusp between despair and hope. Each
theme in turn provides a foundation for the next with each of the three primary sections,
lamentation, supplication and listening following a similar format. Great is Your
Faithfulness: A Responsive Prayer,11 based on Lamentations 3:17, 21.23 overarches
and links each segment which helps the gathered community to find stability and
grounding within a common text. This repetitive and simple sequence allows
participants the freedom to move toward an experience of receptive listening in
unbroken silence before the final response. Throughout the service, simple refrains,
very familiar to participants, provide an aid to deeper meditation. Although it is rare for
a Disciples of Christ service to forgo communion, on this day, when Jesus, the Disciples
and scripture all are silent, the congregation will wait quietly, drawn together by common
sorrow instead of communal celebration.
10
11
Rita Nakashima Brock.
Blair Gilmer Meeks, Standing in the Circle of Grief (Abingdon Press, 2002), 50-51.
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RITUAL
A religious ritual helps the participants to begin to sort out conflicting memories
and feelings by “creating space for realignment of moral reasoning with a new, or
rediscovered system of ultimate meaning.”12 In this way, the various aspects of this
service attempts to address, “people’s persistent efforts to redress wrongs, alleviate
sufferings, and ensure well-being…even as they illustrate complex cultural
interpretations of the human condition and its relation to a cosmos of benign and
malevolent forces.”13 For returning veterans who suffer from moral injury, these
complex interpretations reveal themselves as distrust of self and others which leads to
alienation, isolation and depression. In the novel, The Yellow Birds, the main character
describes his inability to navigate this complexity.
I realized as I stood there in the church, that there was a sharp distinction
between what was remembered, what was told, and what was true…and I didn’t
think I’d ever figure out which was which.14
This service seeks to acknowledge this disorientation and to reorient the sufferer within
a framework of meaning that extends beyond them. In this way, ritual helps to
“formulate a sense of the interrelated nature of things as it reinforces values that
assume coherent interrelations, (through) symbols, activities, organization, timing, and
relationships to other activities.’15
Perhaps, even more deeply felt, within the framework of familiar tradition, ritual
action helps to “reshape the cognitive functions of the brain through focused attention
12
Rita Nakashima Brock.
Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 119.
14
Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds (New York: Little, Brown and Company), 60.
15
Catherine Bell. 136.
13
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and repetition.”16 Therefore, within this Holy Saturday service, the multistep and
repetitive format helps to reinforce a perception of calm efficacy. “Even simple rituals
can be extremely effective…(and those)…performed after experiencing
losses…alleviate grief and reduce anxiety.”17 For example, a template for creating
additional psalms of lament when coupled with the scripture and prayers offered during
the Holy Saturday service, may be used to shape a personal spiritual practice that
“unites intention with a desire to engage (privately) with focused attention within a
meaning framework.”18
FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE
This service centers on lamentation, an expression of grief and despair, and
although it ends with an expression of hope and confidence, there is no intent to provide
a tidy resolution or instantaneous healing. Therefore, it is not focused on confession or
forgiveness and although it makes room for activity it does not demand participation. In
general, Disciples’ non-creedal practice leaves aside confessional statements by the
congregation beyond those included in the Lord’s Prayer. More than that, veteran’s
feelings about the need or desire for forgiveness remain highly complicated, as Marine
Jess Goodell describes:
“There are events that happened in Iraq that I will never, ever forget. How could
we possibly come to terms with an experience like this? And should we come to
terms with it? If we were to, maybe that would mean that something was really
wrong with us.”19
16
Rita Nakashima Brock.
Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton, Why Rituals Work, 2013,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/ (accessed August 25, 2014).
18
Rita Nakashima Brock.
19
Jess Goodell and John Hearn, Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq (Philadelphia:
Casemate, 2011), 120.
17
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Although this service provides one mode of expressing feelings of grief and loss,
which may provide relief of a sort, helping a veteran who wrestles with a need for
forgiveness requires intensive one-on-one counseling with a trusted advisor. It may be
helpful to note that encouraging a veteran to explore the difference between “forgiving
and forgetting, may help liberate them from the idea that they have to accomplish the
impossible task of forgetting what happened so that they can be forgiven.” 20 Beyond
that, while it might seem that the “Christian concept of forgiveness is extremely relevant,
moral injury points to the need for self-forgiveness, which is…impossible without some
sense of transcendence.”21
LAMENTATION
Although this service introduces and encourages engagement with Psalms of
lament, the segments which follow, both support and move participants from deep grief
toward a glimmer of hope. The service design seeks to “take into account the deep
interplay between communal context, Christian tradition, and the faith experiences of
the congregation,”22 by creating a process which gives permission for the community to
grieve together the death of Jesus as well as their own losses. The lamentations found
in scripture, especially in Psalms, find similarity with “the healing narratives (as they)
reveal profound connections among the physical, emotional, mental, relational, and
spiritual aspects of our human story and God’s compassion for the human family.” 23
This service seeks to draw the participants into active engagement with scripture,
as a way of “expressing grief through lament which (in turn) provides a way through the
20
John Sippola, et al.,75.
Aristotle Papanikolau, "Trinity, Virtue and Violence," 17.
22
Kathleen Bellman and Daniel Miggliore, "The Prayer of Lament and the Practice of Ministry,"
in Rachel's Cry, 132.
23
John Sippola, et. al., 76.
21
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pain and a path toward healing.”24 This is particularly important for veterans, because
“soldiers in a war zone often put their grief on hold, until it surfaces months or years
later.”25 More broadly, in the wider church community, congregants may feel pressed to
move quickly through grief experiences as though to do otherwise demonstrates a lack
of faith. Introducing the participants to just one lament, Psalm 56, gives the participants
an opportunity to hear their own stories reflected in the all-too-human testimony found in
scripture. Using the Psalm as a template to create their personal lament helps “gives
voice to the heart’s wrenching and the soul’s pain.”26
THE RIGHT TO HOPE – TILLICH
The intention throughout the service is to allow space and time for grief’s
expression, through the use of lamentation but also to make room for active listening to
God’s response. In this way, the service is designed to support and encourage the
participants in voicing lament without expectation of a perfect and happy ending.
Nonetheless, presenting lamentation as a worthy spiritual practice lies in “continuity with
the biblical tradition…(in which)…the passionate prayer of lament can be a way that
hope is reborn.”27 Paul Tillich, in his sermon The Right to Hope, speaks of hope as a
“permanent force, a driving power as long as a person lives...which no one can live
without...without which we would end in despair, a word that originally meant “without
hope.”28 Tillich notes that it is difficult to “preserve genuine hope…which cannot be
24
John Sippola, et. al., 46.
John Sippola, et. al,. 46.
26
John Sippola, et al., 46.
27
Kathleen Bellman and Daniel Miggliore, 129.
28
Paul Tillich, The Right to Hope, 1965 March, http://www.religiononline.org/showarticle.asp?title=62 (accessed August 14, 2014).
25
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verified by sense experience or rational proof,”29 and which may allude the sufferer.
Veteran Jess Goodell describes the appearance of hope on a good day as she felt “a
stirring inside, as the meaning and purpose and love I once thought dead show signs of
life, after all…it is then that I am able to hope.”30
For Tillich, “hope implies waiting...which demands patience, and patience
demands stillness with one’s self…not a passive waiting, but a receiving waiting in
openness…a quiet tension, open to what may be encountered.”31 Therefore, the
service ends in quiet listening, in hopeful expectation of transcendent encounter. In the
Gospel of Luke, on Saturday, the day after Jesus died, his followers observed the
Sabbath and waited as they “rested according to the commandment.”(23:57) But late on
Sunday, two Disciples walked the road to Emmaus, deep in despair at the death of their
hope in Jesus as the redeemer of Israel. When they encountered Jesus on the road
they did not recognize him until “he joined them at the table, took bread, and blessed
and broke it and gave it to them.”(24:30) In that moment, the Disciples knew Jesus, in
that moment, hope was renewed. “Hope itself, if it is rooted in the reality of something
already given, becomes a driving power and makes fulfillment not certain, but
possible.”32 This Holy Saturday service seeks to move participants through lamentation
toward supplication and finally bring them to a posture of silent and attentive listening.
As they listen for what has already been given, may their hope be renewed as they wait
“in inner stillness, with posed tension and openness toward what they can only
29
Paul Tillich.
Jess Goodell and John Hearn, 183.
31
Paul Tillich.
32
Paul Tillich.
30
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receive.”33 Within the transformative and transcendent presence of God, may they know
that as they wait, “the struggle between hope and despair…is a symptom that the new
has already taken hold.”34
33
34
Paul Tillich.
Paul Tillich.
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Bibliography
Bell, Catherine. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
Bellman, Kathleen, and Daniel Miggliore. “The Prayer of Lament and the Practice of
Ministry.” In Rachel's Cry.
Brock, Rita Nakashima. “Moral Injury and Soul Repair .” Berkeley, CA, 2014, July.
Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Gabriel Lettini. Soul Repair: Recovering From Moral Injury
After War. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012.
Gino, Francesca, and Michael I. Norton. Why Rituals Work. 2013.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/ (accessed 2014, 25-August).
Goodell, Jess, and John Hearn. Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq. Philadelphia:
Casemate, 2011.
Meeks, Blair Gilmer. Standing in the Circle of Grief. Abingdon Press, 2002.
Mejia, Camilo E. Healing Moral Injury: A Lifelong Journey. 2011.
http://forusa.org/fellowship/2011/winter/healing-moral-injury/11606 (accessed 2014 30June).
Papanikolau, Aristotle. “Trinity, Virtue and Violence.”
Powers, Kevin. The Yellow Birds. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Sippola, John, Any Blumenshine, Donald A. Tubesing, and Valerie Yancey. Welcome
Them Home - Help Them Heal. Duluth, MN: Whole Person Associates, Inc.
Tillich, Paul. The Right to Hope. March 1965. http://www.religiononline.org/showarticle.asp?title=62 (accessed August 14, 2014).
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