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I am a fixer.

No, I’m not talking about fixing physical things around the house or fixing something like a car, which might as well be magic as far as I’m concerned. No, I’m also not talking about a fixer in the same Olivia Pope on Scandal is a fixer. For those not quite familiar with that metaphor, a political fixer is someone who trying to stop a scandal from developing, and at least on the show, this seems to involve some pretty shady things.

No, I’m a fixer because when I hear of a problem, I want to fix it.

I’m sure there are many of you out there just like me. When we have a problem in our life, after spending a moment shocked that such a problem could happen, we move straight into figuring out how to fix the problem. When a friend or a family member has a problem, we are just jumping at the bit to offer advice, because we want to fix the problem so our loved one isn’t in pain anymore. And when we encounter some sort of societal ill, our immediate response is to do some kind of social action – sign a petition, donate money to a cause, march, organize, rally, well, you get the idea. I’m sure I’m not the only fixer in this room right now.

In fact, we Unitarian Universalists are pretty good at focusing on the fixing. How many of us have ever said we’re a Unitarian Universalist because we believe in deeds, not creeds? That we need to put our faith into action? I could go on and on here, but I think a lot of us passionate Unitarian Universalists are passionate fixers, whether we truly claim the mantle or not. But rest assured, I claim it.

But I’ve noticed something inside me over the past month – the part of me dedicated to fixing things is on strike.

And I think I know why. There’s just been too much. Too much tragedy right now in the news. The Orlando shooting, as many of you heard me talk about, shook me to my core. And then, there was a week where each day there was another shooting – a shooting of black male without due process in Baton Rouge and St. Paul, the shooting of the police in Dallas, the terror attack in Nice with the truck, and on and on.

It just seemed that week in particular was just filled up with tragedy, with no time to mourn before the next tragedy hit us. And it broke the fixer inside of me. The fixer needed fixing, and still does I suppose. Although I’m content to let the fixer inside me have a little bit of a vacation.

How can I fix these massive, worldwide injustices? Alone, I can’t. I can try and make myself feel better by attending rallies, and trying to change the system through political action. And although I know the importance one voice can be, there are times when it feels like that one voice speaking against injustice just makes me feel worse – I try and try but so far haven’t quite made the systemic changes I’d like to see.

This isn’t to knock the well intentioned social justice efforts of so many in our congregation. This is to say that for me, this doesn’t always seem to work to quell my sense of anger, sorrow, and grief directed toward the universe that makes this sort of injustice possible. After the Orlando tragedy, what seemed to help some was attending a couple of different candlelight vigils, where I was just able to focus on my own sense of grief, anger, and fear. What helped was not trying to avoid those feelings like I usually do, but to give myself the time to sit with those feelings. What helped was lament.

Lament is a word that we don’t often use as Unitarian Universalists. Other religious traditions, however, talk a lot about lament. We don’t seem to focus on it too much – our historical theology is one of love. Our modern day theology is one of action. Our theology tells us we are loved and it’s up to us to spread that love in society. This Unitarian Universalist theology can fail us though when we are in our darkest times, leaving us confused, afraid, bewildered, and in need of comfort.

Simply put, we need to learn how to lament.

So, what is this word lament, exactly? Here’s a definition from a Christian pastor, Jack Wellman:

“Whoever is lamenting is expressing great sorrow or regret and even grief about something or someone as in the loss of a life. This lamenting could be verbally expressed in wailing, weeping, and crying. To lament means that something horrific has likely happened in their life and it moves the person deep within their soul and it is outwardly expressed in such a way that it is demonstrative and can’t be overseen by others.”

As Dan Allender says in his essay, The Hidden Hope in Lament,

“Lamenting isn’t to take pain away. Grief can foster a desire to do something about it. Pain if managed well can lead to good circumstances. This is the role of rituals of lament – help us cope with guilt and hurt and sense of loss. Lament is not an end in itself. But lament opens our hearts to wrestle with a universe that knows sorrow leads to comfort and lament moves to praise.”

So, why do we struggle so much with this idea of lament? I can think of a few reasons.

How often have we felt a little uncomfortable when someone we know and love, or someone we see on TV, has started to lament in public? To express their overwhelming sense of grief through irrational emotionality? We either want to rush in and fix the problem, or we want to hide that person’s passionate lament so we aren’t made emotionally uncomfortable.

We Unitarian Universalists are some people with some strong egos. Not ego in the sense of thinking it’s all about us, but ego in the sense that we as an individual can bend the world to suit our needs. We can change the world. This is a laudable idea generally, but when all the sudden the world doesn’t seem to work anymore, it leaves us wondering why we failed to make the world better. Is it all our fault?

We also have problems with the idea of surrendering to the will of the universe. This mere idea gives me the heebie-jeebies. I don’t like the idea of surrender. I want to fight, not give in. But when the tragedy becomes too much, my will to fight is broken, who do I fight to maintain my sense of normalcy? And I don’t know what to do next other than hide. I guess it really does boil down to fight or flight for me. Why would I want to surrender myself to a universe that can be a pretty crappy place at times? Why would I surrender myself to the very same universe that made me angry, sorrowful, or mournful?

Why would I? Because it can be the only thing that can help.

I want to illustrate this by using a couple of personal examples.

The first is from when I was ten. When I was ten, my father died from a pulmonary embolism at the age of thirty nine. I remember just a few snapshots from the days surrounding the funeral, but one is burned into my memory – the sight of my great grand mother, my dad’s mom’s mom, wailing in grief during the funeral. I mean, wailing. I had never heard that noise come from another human being, and I didn’t know what to do with that. She then started screaming how wrong it was for a grandmother to outlive her grandson, over and over again, and this ninety year old and really frail woman dropped to the floor, out of her wheelchair, and let grief just overcome her. When I think of lament on a continuum scale, she was at one pole. And I was at the exact opposite end of the spectrum.

I also remember during the funeral that at one point, my mother was crying on one of my shoulders, and my grandmother, my dad’s mom, crying on the other. And I sat there, stoically watching the funeral from behind the family privacy screen, thinking that I needed to keep it together around all of this emotionality surrounding me. I needed to be the non-anxious presence in the room. I needed to be the rock for the family.   Ok, what I told myself was that I had to be the man of the family, but that’s what I really meant – I needed to be the steady, calming force in the family.

I kept that emotion bottled up inside. I didn’t let it out. I didn’t scream in grief. I don’t even recall crying during the funeral. I certainly cried before the funeral when I had heard, but I can’t recall if I actually let that emotion show during the actual funeral.

You’re probably thinking to yourself right now, “wow, that probably messed Tim up pretty badly.” And, well, it did mess me up for a few years afterward. I had a hard time ever expressing emotion and grief over his death, it took me a long time to finally mourn, because I had convinced myself it would be inappropriate for me to mourn, be inappropriate for me to express anger at the universe for taking my father, be inappropriate for me to truly lament.

See, I didn’t have any sort of faith that taught me how to lament. I instead had a culture and society that told me I needed to be the man of the family and be the emotional rock. I had a culture and society that told me to be private with my emotions and to not rock the boat. I had a culture and society that told me I needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps and just get over it. I didn’t even know the word lament, much less how to actually do it. So, I kept it bottled up for years until depression threatened to overwhelm me in my teenage years.

Or, putting it succinctly, a textbook example of what NOT to do.

But, I can learn. The second story I want to share is from a few weeks ago in response to the Orlando shooting.

When word started to spread of the shooting, it was a Sunday morning, and during the second service I was upstairs in my office frantically trying to catch the latest news. With update after update, my heart broke. You heard my homily the week after, talking about the fear I had in my heart. I was afraid that my community had been targeted by hate, and that it would continue to be targeted. That I was unsafe in places that had been sanctuaries. I broke the day of the shooting.

That Sunday night, however, I left for a retreat with my New Jersey religious educator colleagues down at Ocean grove. I was raw, and shaking with emotion on the drive down. Listening to the radio, crying on the Garden State Parkway. My colleagues were supportive, but I was trying to hide it. But that night I went to a hastily organized vigil at a gay bar in Asbury Park with a fellow gay colleague, and it was exactly what I needed. My colleague wondered if we should speak at the vigil, and I told him that at least what I needed was not a time to help heal others, I needed the time for my own healing and lament.

I went to a total of three vigils that week. One in Asbury Park, one here in Morristown, and one here at MUF. And each vigil helped me release some of my grief. Participating in these public rituals of lament helped me come to terms with something that if it had happened a decade earlier, I would have been incapable of processing. And writing, and giving, a homily at our MUF vigil was my own form of writing a prayer of lament. It helped put words into what I was feeling, and helped me process the anger, fear, and grief I was feeling.

Simply put, lament saved my soul that week, and it has made me a believer in the power of lament. I just wish I had known earlier.