Alas: A Lament for Tisha B’Av

1.
Alas, the city!

All the good things of a city,
These marvelous people,
And all that push and that pull!
All that effort and disputation,
Those meetings and glorious conversations,
And all those show offs and all the crowds that love to watch and listen to them!
All that science and knowledge,
The teaching and that learning,
All this glorious movement of air and breath!

Alas, the city,
Shut down.
The city cries.
We have lost our hearts.
Blessed Holy Wholeness,
Breathing us in and breathing us out,
We forgot to give thanks.

2. Alas, God’s anger!

Let’s assume that God,
However you understand or don’t understand God,
Is irked.

It’s only logical.
Yet it is unclear which irks God the most:
The lies, the greed and corruption,
Or is it a package deal?
But perhaps these are “only”
Sins against people, not sins agains God,
So as to be dealt with during Elul
While we work it out amongst ourselves.

Because we will have our say:
We have
Our lawyers, our judges, our prisons,
Our protests, our actions, our votes.
And everyone knows what you’ve done.

But for the sins against the One-ness,
Prepare yourself to be weighed and found wanting.
You reveled in how you broke our connection to the Whole,
You are appalling!
You attacked our hearts and
You used our fear against us.
These are sins against God,
The ones that break true connection,
And it is known who and what you are.

Alas, Gods anger,
Is fierce
And deserved.

3.
Alas, loneliness!

Eating, Sleeping, Walking
Alone

TV, Facebook, Prayer
Alone

Coughing, Crying, Dying
Alone

Alas, loneliness!
I am so frightened.
I weep and who will hear me?

4. Alas, compassion!

You were willfully foolish.
You were cruel and used hate as a tool.
In your greed and stupidity,
You ignored the degradation of our planet
And the answers of science
And look where it has led us!
Species and forests disappear.
Old people and the poor are sacrificed.
Essential workers, disproportionately People of Color,
Are used and discarded
And die in disproportionate numbers.
Racism is celebrated,
Misogyny extolled.

Sexual and gender diversity denied.
Where is normal human empathy?
It’s so creepy.

We grieve for the sick and the dead,
We grieve for the murdered and the neglected,
We grieve for all we have lost and will lose.

Alas, compassion!
Pray for mercy.

5.​ Alas, memory!

We remember
Those who died by virus
And those who died by police,
Those who died by gas
And those who died by suffocation,
Those who died by infection
And those who died from neglect.

We remember
Those who were shot in trenches
And those who died alone in the ICU,
Those who died by starvation
And those who were shot in the back,
Those who died with a knee on their neck
And those who died hanging from a tree.

And because we remember
We resist our privilege if we have it;
We resist racism when we see it;
We resist cruelty and stupidity when they beckon;
We resist lethargy and despair when it calls us.

Alas, memory!
We remember and promise to change
Ourselves and the world,
Returning to our true selves
Via
Holy Conversation,
Sacred Disturbance
And Necessary Trouble.

Amen