“All you who pass
this way,
look and see
is any sorrow like
the sorrow
inflicted on me…”
--Lamentations 1:12
Is this not the cry of all who are in pain? Look!
Look at this! Have you ever seen
anything like this? See! See my pain. See me. Please look and see me, see what has happened
to me. Has anyone ever like this before?
See! See what happened!
Please. Think of the child with
her first skinned knee rushing to her mother; is she not calling out for more
than healing or medical attention? Think
of the drama of that cry, those tears.
Isn’t her cry also a cry pleading for attention. A cry demanding to be
seen. See! See what has happened to me. Has anything like this ever happened before?
And, isn’t it true? Isn’t every pain the first of its kind? Each
of us is an individual, unlike any other person ever made. I cannot feel your pain, no matter how empathetic
I am. You cannot feel my pain. I cannot
know what it means to you to be hurt, to be lonely, to be broken hearted or
broken armed? In Merchant of
Venice, Shylock famously proclaims a universal connection through
suffering: If you prick us, do we not bleed?
And yes, there are universal aspects, we do all bleed when pricked, or
when we stumble and skin our knees…
But, my skinned knee is not yours. And that is the point. I still remember that desperate
cry of as my children ran toward me or my wife calling, Mommy! And wanting only to be held, kissed,
comforted, acknowledged. Even after the
ointments and bandages were applied, they still wanted to retell the story of
their fall, of their pain. Wanted to know that someone had seen their
suffering, their sorrow.
We all want to be seen, individually; not as a member of a
group, an ethnic identity, an orientation, a gender. Not even just as people. What is Shylock’s demand but a cry that he
too is human! That isn’t enough. Deep
down inside, we want to be seen as individuals, as one of a kind creations—because
that is what we each and everyone one of us are. We are each of us one of a kind creations, and the world
would not, and will not be the same without us. Without our lives, our joys, our struggles, our sorrows.
Every time someone cries out for rights, for equality, for
justice, they are crying out—look at me! Look and see, I am alive. I am
real. And no one has ever suffered like
this, ever loved like this, ever felt like this before, because no one has ever
been ME before…
That is the lesson I hear in the cry of the author of
lamentations. A call to wake up. A call to open my eyes and see, to look around
and realize each day that –as it says in Revelations-- God truly does “make
all things new.” (21:5) Open
your eyes and see.
