Lovely Lament: 2023's Liturgy

 From Every Moment Holy

A Liturgy for the Death of a Dream

O Christ, in whom the final fulfillment 

of all hope is held secure,

 

I bring to you now the weathered

fragments of my former dreams,

the broken pieces of my expectations,

the rent patches of hopes worn thin,

the shards of some shattered image of 

life as I once thought it would be.

 

What I so wanted

has not come to pass.

I invested my hopes in desires

that returned only sorrow 

and frustration.  Those dreams, 

like glimmering faerie feasts,

could not sustain me,

 

and in my head I know that you

are sovereign even over this --

over my tears, my confusion,

and my disappointment.

But I still feel,

in this moment,

as if I have been abandoned,

as if you do not care that these hopes

have collapsed to rubble.

 

And yet I know this is not so.

You are the sovereign of my sorrow.

You apprehend a wider sweep with wiser eyes

than mine.  My history bears the 

fingerprints of grace.  You were always

faithful, though I could not always

trace quick evidence of your presence in

my pain, yet did you remain at work,

lurking in the wings, sifting all my

splinterings for bright embers that might

be breathed into more eternal dreams.

 

I have seen so oft in retrospect, how

you had not neglected me, but had, with a

master's care, flared my desire like silver in

a crucible to burn away some lesser longing,

and bring about your better vision.

 

So let me remain tender now, to how

you would teach me.  My disappointments

reveal so much about my own agenda

for my life, and the ways I quietly demand

that it should play out: free of conflict,

free of pain, free of want.

 

My dreams are all so small.

 

Your bigger purpose has always been

for my greatest good, that I would

day-to-day be fashioned into a more fit vessel

for the indwelling of your Spirit,

and molded into a more compassionate

emissary of your coming Kingdom.

And you, in love, will use all means to shape

my heart into those perfect forms.

 

So let this disappointment do its work.

My truest hopes have never failed,

they have merely been buried

beneath the shoveled muck of disillusion,

or encased in a carapace of self-serving

desire.  It is only false hopes that are brittle,

shattering like shells of thin glass, to reveal the

diamond hardness of the unshakeable eternal

hopes within.  So shake and shatter all that 

would hinder my growth, O God. 

Unmask all false hopes,

that my one true hope might shine out

unclouded and undimmed.

So let me be tutored by this new

disappointment.

Let me listen to its holy whisper,

that I might release at last these lesser dreams.

That I might embrace the better dreams you

dream for me, and for your people,

and for your kingdom, and for your creation.

Let me join myself to these, investing all hope

in the one hope that will never come undone

or betray those who place their trust in it.

Teach me to hope, O Lord,

always and only in you.

You are the King of my collapse.

You answer not what I demand,

but what I do not even know to ask.

Now take this dream, this husk,

this chaff of my desire, and give it back

reformed and remade according to

your better vision,

or do not give it back at all.

Here in the ruins of my wrecked

expectation, let me make this best confession:

Not my dreams, O Lord,

not my dreams,

but yours, be done.

Amen.