(A riff on Psalm 39, in light of the fact that it is included in many of the funerary liturgies I have been reviewing this week)

I’ve always tried to be guarded in my words, even to the point of meekness, because those things left unsaid which lurk just beneath the surface… are dangerous. When you stray from that path of social convention, other things can also come loose. You may lose sight of the duty to hold space for all other creatures: weak, strong, good and evil. So I remained silent and still. And all around me there is violence and murder. I watch transgression unfold against the most basic terms – knitted into the fabric of the universe – of humanity and friendship. Men and women grasp for power and hoard wealth. The banality of all this evil causes me to burn with rage. I can no longer be silent, so like Job, I issue my question to the source of all life:

Does my life (or indeed anything) have purpose? Those theologians told me that I should embrace God-given vocation. In humility, yes, but still – they said – seek not leisure and detachment, but accomplish small purposeful tasks with your span. Build a better world.

Now suffering and death pervade the created world, set in motion by some of those same theologians and the question of legacy weighs so hard that it might suffocate me. This message that I gulped down in youthful foolishness and ambition feels uncalibrated, foolish, untrue. When I take an honest look and consider the time of the earth, the spans (and trajectories?) set in motion by Love, we are barely even a speck of energetic dust. Our time is shorter than a single disdainful gasp of the universe. We are just shadows, flitting about our business, then vanished by the shining lights of the present societal collapse. By the death of children.

So what, Love, do I wait for? I am chastened. silenced. consumed. I shake with weeping, I feel my weakness and desolation even into my bones. Will you weep with me? Will we ever feel joy again?

I am a stranger to thee: and a sojourner, like many of my generations before me. Spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I too go hence, and be no more seen.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.