Words of Hope
05-02-2022
A little over a year ago, eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent, were killed in three Atlanta spas. The incident exposed the too often overlooked and under told story of hatred and violence against Asian Americans. Leading Change spoke with Dr. Jina Kang, assistant professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, inviting her to reflect on the time since that tragedy and how biblical texts offer ways to give expression to both our grief and our hope.
What happened in Atlanta on that day in March was shocking – not because we had experienced something new, after all, this story has become painfully and numbingly familiar. In recent memory, then and now, what has been etched into our collective consciousness is the seemingly unending stream of violence after violence – images of wounded bodies, dead bodies, and weeping loved ones piling up so that there isn’t moment enough to properly or adequately grieve, to mourn, to name our pain before the next news alert. The shock of what happened in Atlanta and all that has preceded and followed has suspended us in a perpetual state of shock, a perpetual backlog of grief just festering in our collective consciousness.
The shock, anger, sadness, sorrow, and melancholy run deep for those whom we have lost – including the 8 people, 6 of them Asian American women, killed in Atlanta last March. So, public demonstrations and campaigns of Stop AAPI Hate were not only an anthem for change and a call for justice, but ways to publicly and collectively name our pain – that is, to grieve together and reshape a public consciousness that makes instinctive assumptions about AAPI people and, in particular, the women who worked at a spa. When we lament and grieve together, we embody the insistence that those whom we are grieving are worthy of grief – that these victims were mothers, workers with dreams, and people who are still meaningful to their grieving families and communities.
Public demonstrations, art, music, and, yes, prayer have a way of reshaping our imagination of one another with the subtlety of waves that roll over stones that become smooth and shaped over time. These defiantly challenge our impulse to cement one another into a stock image, rather than to see the sacred story unfolding in each of our individual lives as well as our collective consciousness.
As many are feeling the weight of the backlog of grief, one wonders if there are enough bodies, enough words, enough imagination, enough notes to give expression to the immensity of our loss and pain let alone to imagine hope. It seems we are not alone in this search as the Psalms are full of ancient voices of lament that dared to name their pain and wove together words of resilience, protest, and hope. These lament psalms – both voiced as an individual and as a collective – assume a listening audience to hear, to acknowledge, to grieve losses that may go ungrieved otherwise. These words may inspire us to find new words and familiar words to voice our laments. So, if we listen to these laments, we give audience to their defiance against hopelessness and affirm that their pain has been heard. If we say and pray these laments, we join together in naming our pain and amplify our defiance against hopelessness. As Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker write: “We must cross the raging rivers of grief to rest before the still waters of blessing.”[1]
In collaboration with the Solidarity Building Initiative, Dr. Jina Kang and Dr. Lis Valle, assistant professor of Homiletics and Worship and director of Community Worship Life, created a resource kit as a guide for creating your own laments. This Prayer Collective Kit is available at https://sbimccormick.org/prayer-collective.
[1] Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston: Beacon, 2001), 250-251.
Dr. Jina Kang, assistant professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
“…the Psalms are full of ancient voices of lament that dared to name their pain and wove together words of resilience, protest, and hope.”