{"id":3763,"date":"2010-01-06T18:47:02","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T23:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3763"},"modified":"2010-01-06T19:23:08","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T00:23:08","slug":"american-lamentations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/06\/american-lamentations\/","title":{"rendered":"American Lamentations…"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Book of Lamentations<\/font><\/strong> in the Bible was written by the Prophet Jeremiah after the destruction of First Temple by by Nebuchadnezza<\/span> – probably a prelude to the Babylonian Captivity. Although the destruction of Jerusalem was by a foreign conqueror, the Lamentations portray it as God’s work – to punish the Israelites for sins, incompletely specified:<\/div>\n
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    17<\/sup>The <\/sub>\"JeremiahLORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries…<\/sub><\/font><\/em><\/div>\n
    19<\/sup>Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the LORD: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.<\/sub><\/font><\/em><\/div>\n
    20<\/sup>Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?<\/sub><\/font><\/em><\/div>\n
    21<\/sup>The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.<\/sub><\/font><\/em><\/div>\n
    22<\/sup>Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the LORD’s anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.<\/sub><\/font><\/em><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n
    One has the sense that the abject misery expressed in the Book of Lamentations<\/font><\/strong> is a message to God – we have suffered greatly, so can we now be atoned?<\/em> a common theme in the Torah [Old Testament] – redemption through suffering. Lest one doubt this point, read on in the Book of Ezekeil<\/font><\/strong> that follows Lamentations<\/font><\/strong>:<\/div>\n
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      \"Ezekiel8<\/sup>Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, am against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations.<\/sub><\/em><\/font><\/div>\n
      9<\/sup>And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thine abominations.<\/sub><\/em><\/font><\/div>\n
      10<\/sup>Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.<\/sub><\/em><\/font><\/div>\n
      11<\/sup>Wherefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD; Surely, because thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations, therefore will I also diminish thee; neither shall mine eye spare, neither will I have any pity.<\/sub><\/em><\/font><\/div>\n
      12<\/sup>A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; and I will scatter a third part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them.<\/sub><\/em><\/font><\/div>\n
      13<\/sup>Thus shall mine anger be accomplished, and I will cause my fury to rest upon them, and I will be comforted: and they shall know that I the LORD have spoken it in my zeal, when I have accomplished my fury in them.<\/sub><\/em><\/font><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n
      In 1917, Freud explored this theme of the relationship between anger and anguish in his classic  article on Mourning and Melancholia<\/font><\/strong>. Without discussing his whole point, he saw the mind as divided in grief, and depression with one part of the mind attacking another part – something like self-flagellation. It’s a phenomenon we’re all aware of in the way Grief plays out over time:<\/div>\n
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      • \n
        Denial:<\/strong> the early period where the loss is denied.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
      • \n
        Depression:<\/strong> the painful, sad emptiness that comes when the loss "sinks in."<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
      • \n
        Anger:<\/strong> anger at the loss – at the lost object for being gone, or anything else that’s handy.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
      • \n
        Working through:<\/strong> rebuilding a life in the absence of the lost loved one.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
        This sequence is one of the few psychological sequences you can count on in humans. It’s hard-wired. So what’s with the Book of Lamentations<\/font><\/strong>, the Book of Ezekeil<\/font><\/strong>, Freud<\/font><\/strong>, Grief<\/font><\/strong>, Depression<\/font><\/strong>, throw Job<\/font><\/strong> in there too? What am I getting at? <\/div>\n
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        .\"Job\"<\/div>\n

        2009 felt like a period of Lamentation to me – an angry lament<\/font><\/strong>. That’s neither what I expected nor what I wished for, it’s just how it has played out. Looking back on things, it makes perfect sense. But I didn’t see it coming. As much as we’ve ranted about it, I don’t think we still have any idea how much we lost in the last decade in every dimension. And that’s not just from the perspective of a Liberal. Everyone lost – Conservatives, Christians, all of us. We lost our position in the world, untold wealth, the lives of Americans, jobs, salaries, industry, human rights, every corner of our lives has a hole in it. There’s a part of Jeremiah in every one of us – praying for some relief.<\/p>\n

        And we’re mad as hell, almost all of us – Conservatives, Liberals, Indifferents. We don’t talk about it, but all of us are grieving over our losses – anger sitting just under the surface. The Conservatives rave that Obama is taking America away from us – and show nostalgic "Mean Joe Green" commercials. The Liberals rant that Bush and Cheney already took  everything away from us. But I expect that if most of us looked closely inside, we’d feel like the ancient Hebrew Prophets Jeremiah and Ezekeil, or the long-suffering Job, wondering what we did wrong, why we’re being punished. And 9\/11 sits in the background of all of it. <\/p>\n

        So maybe that’s part of the reason we’ve had such a depressing, contentious year. The only consolation is that the point of the grieving process is to get to the last phase – working through – rebuilding a new way to be in the absence of all we’ve lost. May we get there soon. We’re all worn out… <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        The Book of Lamentations in the Bible was written by the Prophet Jeremiah after the destruction of First Temple by by Nebuchadnezza – probably a prelude to the Babylonian Captivity. Although the destruction of Jerusalem was by a foreign conqueror, the Lamentations portray it as God’s work – to punish the Israelites for sins, incompletely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}