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Good morning. Buenos dias. Good morning. I am Professor Gregory Lee Puellar.

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I teach Old Testament here. I welcome all of you. It's a pleasure to see all of you here for the first Westerbelt lecture. I'm delighted that Dr.

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Cheryl Ann Kirk Dugan is here with us. I'd like to read these words by poet Cheryl Ann Kirk Dugan, which come from her poem, delving deeper shades of purple. Sprung from the Nile, many thousands coming from the continent, groaning, birthing, giving her young, her old into bondage, their cargo, God's children of most noble heritage.

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They stayed their course despite walking through the doors of no return. These saints from whom we inherited much, we honor and celebrate in gratitude as we delve into the mysteries, the powers, the tenacities of these awesome women who traverse death in many ways so that we might live. Daughter of Rudolph Valentino and Naomi Mosley Kirk, Professor Kirk Dugan is native of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

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She received her bachelor in voice and piano from nearby University Southwest Louisiana, currently University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She then came to the University of Texas, where she received her master of music in voice. I will note that for her master's thesis recital, she sang the lyric mezzo-soprano role.

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In June 1981, she had her Carnegie Hall debut, where she programmed African-American spirituals. With a rich musical career, she stayed in Austin, which most singers, musicians seem to do, to pursue her Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And finally, she went up the road to Baylor University, where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy and Religion. I love her dissertation title, Theodicy and the Redacted African-American Spirituals of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

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I would agree with Ashia Henderson that Reverend Dr. Kirk Dugan is a who's who among African-Americans. She has given her family much to celebrate over the years with her numerous awards and publications. As Professor of Religion at Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh, North Carolina, Reverend Dr.

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Kirk Dugan has inspired, challenged, and transformed her students and her guild with her teaching and scholarship. Among the issues raised in her numerous books is the importance of the lived experience as inscribed in African-American song and music for interpreting scripture and doing relevant theology. Among her most recent books is one she co-authored with Marlon F. Hall titled, Wake Up, Hip Hop, Christianity, and the Black Church.

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Yet, Reverend Dr. Kirk Dugan is not simply poet, performer, and professor. She is also preacher, priest, and prophet. Indeed, these are not separate and distinct roles.

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It is easy to see in her scholarship and in her public witness, many more P's at work simultaneously. And yet, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge her rich contributions as an ordained elder in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church to the Christian Church in general and the African-American Church in particular. In the words of one of her favorite African-Americans, and spirituals I've been in the storm so long I've been in the storm so long children I've been in the storm so long oh give me little time to pray please join me in welcoming Reverend Dr.

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Kirk Dugan oh fix me Oh, fix me. Oh, fix me. Fix me, Jesus.

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Why don't you fix me? Good morning. Good morning. I always have to check in with God before I do what I does.

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Because God makes me do what I do. And therefore, if folks don't like what I did, I tell them, pray for the sister. Thank you for that warm introduction to Dr. Chad Wardlaw, to all the trustees and alums and staff and faculty and students of Austin Prez.

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Babies, we've come a long way. When I came to Austin Press in 1984, it was truly a lot of times it was like the Presbyterians being the frozen chosen, so that when I said amen the first time in chapel, folk went, What's that? But then toward the end of my sojourn here, folks will say, Are you coming to my senior sermon? I need an amen corner.

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So it's a blessing. It's a blessing to be here. I honor this sacred space, I honor the task for which I'm here. a celebration to be able to be between the other two lecturers.

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And it's just fabulous being here. And I thank all of you for being here because you could have been other places. I thank my sister, Deidre Kirk, who's also an APTS alum class of 2010, for taking on time out of her hectic schedule to be here because we Christians have a lot of work to do, just in case you thought we had arrived, we have not. The timelessness and timeliness of lament engaging sorrow in psalms, spiritual blues, country, opera, and hip-hop.

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An ode to a friend released by death in memoriam. Though the hand of death had hovered over his cancerous-laden body for days, as radiation failed to exact a miracle, the full weight pressed the life out of his body. And within less time than it takes for the church to say amen, he breathes his last. Leaving the church mortal, received by the church triumphant, the body of Christ resurrected into immortality.

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The 12th hour after you visited me in the spirit realm to say I love Sankofa, the African American Pastoral Leadership Program at San Antonio where we work together, I love all of you, I did my best. I'm going to take my rest. As the clock ceased ticking for his life, and the angels, probably along with St. Peter, sing and play harps and welcome James to heaven.

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For death, there is no rewind button, except for the resurrected hope of eternal life with Christ. So I dedicate this lecture to the Reverend Dr. James A. Noel, who took his wings.

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January 31st, 2016. I also acknowledge our friends over in the overflow room, and we thank you for being there as well. Many times the space, depths, dynamics, parameters, and priorities of sorrow and grief that scream lament are foreign to us. When death visits and pain stings, we are often bereft of the vocabulary to articulate our course of reality.

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These moments can trigger insidious platitudes and bankruptcyology from well-meaning family friends that prove meaningless, like, oh, are they in a better place? Oh, well, God needed another angel. That's not helpful. People don't need to hear that.

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I don't want to hear that. In many cultures where we celebrate youth and vitality and fail to embrace the beauty of aging, death and loss can be particularly paralyzing. When one's life's quest has focused on acquisitions of things and status, death reminds us that we have wasted precious time, shortchanging God in ourselves and our neighbors of profound intimacy and spiritual engagement. And yet, as Christians, we have hope of eternal life.

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Ironically, despite that our doctrines and creeds and personal statements of faith-based on scripture affirm that we believe in eternal life with God, Most of us are not in a hurry to get there. Paradoxically, when we think about our global domestic and local world, our negation and dismissal of the image of God in some human bodies calls into question what we really believe and how we process the ramifications of the annihilation of humanity and our global ecosystems.

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Recent history in the United States reflects horrific, unspeakable, despicable tragedies from a murder of a youth within a gated community in San Fran, Florida, to the slaughter of babies in an elementary school in Sandy Hood, Connecticut, to a massacre in a hospital in San Bernardino, to the utter disregard for bodies, especially young black and brown male bodies on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California, and black female bodies like Sandra Bland's in jail cells in Texas, and all of the bodies of the so-called illegal aliens and those bodies kidnapped into sexual trafficking. Do we think black lives, the lives of white babies, and the lives of transgendered persons, and the lives of poor women, and the lives of refugees do not matter? We forget that, but for the grace of God, we would be in the same place as a matter of space and time and who our parents happen to be.

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Do we not see that to have Native Americans, First Nations persons, required to live on reservations? where we have so tainted their diets that they have inordinate amounts of diabetes and alcoholism, that this is nothing but 21st century slavery, mass incarceration outside of jails? Have we become so jaded and cynical that we can callously discount any lives, especially when they do not think or look or act like us? especially when they come from vulnerable populations.

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We must remember our history. That's what happened in Germany around World War II when they had to pay back the debt. That is the way Hitler was able to co-opt them because Germans had been affluent, now we're upset, we have no money, we're broke, what do we do? In his rhetoric he convinced people it's a Jew's fault.

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And Germans in that country and others around the world denied that the Holocaust happened, even though the ashes or the remains were falling all over the countryside. We forget. But it's easy to scapegoat someone we can call other if it makes us feel better and we don't have to be responsible for what we have or have not done.

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Historically, consider this country's beginnings are rooted in a toxic mix of murder, mayhem, and puritanical ideologies. Consider that the adage all men created equal emblazoned in the Declaration of Independence explicitly went all white male Protestant landowners. So if you were white and Catholic, it didn't matter. If you were women, it didn't matter.

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Any color, you were not considered free. That's why we have to understand the power of language. Consider that the gentrification occurring here in Austin and other places running homeowners of 20 or 30 years out of their homes because they cannot afford the taxes. What's Christian in that?

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What's respectful or what's just in that? I understand people want to make money, but why not grandfather people in just like we do with copyright, 50 years plus life, and then after that, then up the taxes? The greed is such a powerful courtesan. Consider how segregated most of our churches still are on Sunday mornings.

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Consider the untreated biases that many of us embody unawares. Consider that many of us hate or despise ourselves, our parents, or whoever we decide we need to scapegoat for our current circumstances. Systemic and personal and communal scapegoating and the need to manipulate and control continues to exasperate the socio-location of the haves and have-nots. And we see that a lot right now in our country.

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And a lot of that is what's running the upcoming 2016 election. To such a pathological quagmire, Jesus says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Murder of prophets. killer of the ones who brought you God's news how often I've ate to embrace your children the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you wouldn't let me and now you're so desolate nothing but a ghost town what is there left to say only this I'm out of here soon the next time you see me I'll say you'll say oh God has blessed him he's come bringing God's rule

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To begin to unpack this conundrum of angst, pain, and loss amidst the almost unforgivable, we need a language, a language of lament, a language that passionately expresses grief, of sorrow. Artists have expressed lament in many ways, notably in song. Someone on the outside of a church stated this way, Bach gave us God's word, Mozart gave us God's laughter, Beethoven gave us God's fire. God gave us music that we might pray without words.

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This first Wolterbelt lecture explores lament as a principle and process for dealing with one of the great leveling agents of humanity, the trauma of loss and grief. After briefly presenting my approach and exploring the meaning of lament, this presentation uses various musical genres to help us examine the diverse tapestry of lament and its meaning for human struggle and flourishing. By exploring a spiritual, an aria, hymn, a hip-hop or rap song, the blues, and the country song, we present lament as a poetic tool of healing.

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Jerusalem responds, sharpening tools, clarifying language. The gift of engaging new ideas, of calling older practices into question, of naming the obvious that can be destructive that society teaches us to just get over it, requires careful, thoughtful methodology and exegesis that one can make plain so people know what we're talking about. So often misunderstandings occur because while everyone may be speaking English, how we perceive that English and how we hear and what we hear even while listening to the same words may not be the same thing.

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My methodology involves womanist theory. Womanist theory calls for one to live in the present, be a student of history, engage in a creative imagination that exercises radical listening and discernance, like what is going on with God's people? What is going on with God? How do we explore what's happening because

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of where we're located and what we believe. So to look at any issues that oppress, whether it's race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability. The next time you're going into a public building, notice, is it wheelchair accessible? Is there a place to push a button?

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Because if you have a lot of bags you're carrying, or if you're with a toddler, you don't need to have to open the door. If you have arthritis, So there are a lot of reasons where when we walk into a public building, the door should automatically open. But some of our cities are not that hospitable.

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A woman's emancipatory theory exercises the demonic, the pathological to embrace a message of hope and transformation. It is to empower those who've been oppressed. It's also to remind people who are oppressing. and call them into question, Why are you doing that?

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This is not necessary. There really is enough. In the words of the late Rodney King, we all really could get along, especially as Christians, if we practice what Jesus said, Love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, body, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself.

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Of course, some of us don't love ourselves. Duh. So since we don't know how to love ourselves, it's really difficult. to love other people and we really don't love God.

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I mean, we do lip service, we do awesome sermons, we do phenomenal Bible studies, but do we really, do we even really know what it would mean to love God? Not God as a Santa Claus, you know, or God as a fixer-upper, but God as that empowering, loving being who created us. I mean, what would happen if each of us just in this room the overflow room really got that we are made in God's image it would not only be awesome and thank you my sister but guess what we get over a lot of issues that we have because we don't understand this is a temple so I need to take care of this body and he's a temple and she's a temple therefore I'm not just going to use any kind of language to that person I'm going to respect them don't have to like them but I'm going to respect them if and only

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only it's because they're made in the image of God. Thus, women want us to take seriously people's lived experiences, want us to look at what is happening in culture, what is happening in music and poems and novels and arts, because often our cultural artists get at issues before us in the church do. So that's why it's important to be aware of this. And so as woman has thought, we look at issues of theology, identity, what's sacred spirituality.

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We look at the Bible and other sacred texts, the authority, issues of character, ecology, aesthetics, culture. We look at context. We look at behaviors. We want to examine everything that is intersecting in the lived realities of people.

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And then as I look at biblical exegesis, as the woman is scholar then, I look at tempered cynicism or suspicion, which presses me to question with a sensitivity that knows the joy of the impossible and the hope of embedded faith together the scholarship that helps me appreciate the complexities of such a task. And then creativity provides a context where standard interpretations and traditions do not impede me exploring the text in new ways. Courage provides the cushion for moments when the analysis leads to more of the same or mystery. Commitment to hearing a just way of using these texts also pushes the interpretation.

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provides the impetus to reveal the oppression within the text. I mean how often have you heard a sermon on Judges 19 with the Levite and the concubine or Hosea 1 where it's stated allegorical but it's not looking at the fact that God God tells Hosea, Go find yourself a hoe, in street language. We say , a hoe, and marry her, and then give these children some ugly names.

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With those names, how could they do anything wonderful? But we need to problematize the text. Too often, however, we worship the Bible instead of worshiping God. We practice bibliology, which we're warned not to do.

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Curiosity then presses one to keep searching the realm of the sacred to push the envelope toward the parameters of inclusivity, mercy, justice, and love. So as a Christian womanist, and not all womanists are Christian, but I am. I'm a storyteller, a preacher, a prophet, a priest, a poet, a prayer warrior, professor, performer, and my dean gave me the term a polyhistor. And you say, Preacher, what's a polyhistoric polyhistoric as a Renaissance woman?

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I say, I'll take the title. Because I love being who God created me to be and that's my hope for you, that you love being you. I always tell my students I love and I like me some Cheryl and Kirk Doogan. Number one, I was blessed with a phenomenal family and number two, with my various educational experiences, I have worked

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most of my issues? Because believe it or not, we all have issues. If we're over two, we have issues. The only question is, are we aware of our issues and have we done the work on our issues?

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And then when the slippage happens, can I say, my bad, I made a mistake, and been moved to make amends about not just saying I'm sorry, but how can I make sure that I don't ever do that again? So it's with this kind of energy that we want to look at these laments, because too many of our people are hurting. Hurt people hurt other people. Massacres are occurring.

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Domestic violence is occurring. Police shooting innocent people. That's out of hurt and out of misconceptions. And so we have to have a language to help people deal with their hurt so they can then respect the bodies of other people.

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Lament, honing lament and grasping its meaning. Lament is faith speech that names the deep heartache and pain experienced on a personal, familiar, communal, local, state, federal, global level. I was intrigued when Princess Diana died because I said, I want to see in a country where people don't go to church a lot, where most of the time when you go to these huge cathedrals, there are more tourists there.

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I want to see how they're going to turn out for her service. And the streets were lined because people used this as an opportunity to grieve personally and grieve communally. Because at the end of the day, all of that grief wasn't really about Diana, but that was an opportunity for people to grieve. And that's something we can't get away from.

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Much of the pain and aching around grief is nebulous, not quite finished, not yet answered, and most definitely not yet resolved or healed. Many of us live at the intersection of deep, ancient, calcified grief. Some of us are aware that something is amiss, and we've tried self-help books, alcohol, prescription drugs, extramarital affairs, youth-enhancing surgery, food, retail therapy, new wardrobes, new cars, and other toys to seek solace in a solution to the abyss between our rib cage, the knot that stays in our throat. Each day, we become a bit more fragile.

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Our anguish, angst, amens, and alleluias get tossed and turned together as an unsatisfying goulash. With a world and a personal life rife with violence and exploitation, of questions that challenge our culture and our faith amid alienation, anxiety, displacement, and despondency, now more than ever, we need lament. We need lament language, language prayers, and liberation justice rituals and traditions to provide an environment of compassion. where we can appeal to God and ask for help and inspiration amid injustice and universal suffering.

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We need such language that moves us to love and not towards vengeance, as in the aftermath of 9/11, that sought to exact vengeance. That wasn't about justice. The war is about vengeance. While we have a world history documenting universal use of lament, we often find that people do not hear them or neglect their traditions.

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With an attitude of humility and hope amid gratitude for a relationship with God, we can offer lament for divine help and guidance. Lament is an appropriate response to tragedy. When we have the freedom to create lament within community and mutuality where all are welcome as we name our suffering to God, as stories are shared and misunderstandings confessed and clarified, then we can come to acknowledge the pain that ultimately can be transformed to joy. I didn't say it would be easy, I didn't say be fast, but it can happen.

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Individuals and communities can experience relief when a lot of the space and the privilege of self-expression within oral living processes. Suffering is ancient and contemporary. Such drama induced by political intrigue and corruption is not acceptable.

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Because this continues to occur, the reality of death and tragedy in the world means that people are creating laments and we need room for more intentional work on laments so that God will hear us. We need to hear ourselves and our friends and neighbors and God in relationships. Walt Whitman's O Captain, My Captain mourns the death of Abraham Lincoln.

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A.M. Klein's elegy laments the horrific, heinous experience of the shore. Because this continues to occur, the reality of death and tragedy in the world means that people are creating laments. And we need more intentional work on laments so that we can be free of some of the pain and suffering.

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Dick Holler's Abraham, Martin, and John signifies the angst rampant during the 1960s assassinations in the United States. The process of creating and engaging the men involves writing and singing popular and traditional songs. This process becomes intergenerational, dialogical, and communical. It engages creative, cathartic improvisation, shared motifs, and themes of human suffering.

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These dirges or funeral songs or lament prayers may also include the event and the means of death, a complaint, the accusation of a perpetrator, a call for a curse, revenge or justice, an address to the dead, questions, the imperative to mourn, a reconciling motif, praise for the dead, prayer to the deity. Now, not all laments have all of them, but most of them have some of those components. Just as in music, scripture also has various things that it looks towards lament.

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And all of you know, or many of you know, the phenomenal work of Walter Brueggemann. And Brueggemann tells us that Israel's lament speech in the Psalms usually has six elements or components. First, address God. Second, stating a specific complaint.

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Third, offering a petition. Unapologetically, a call on God, say, What's up, God? You need to fix this. Four, motivations.

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If God didn't hear the first petition, then there are more motivations to say, Okay, God, you need to get up, step up to your game. Five, goes beyond the request for salvation for good of self and community. Then the petitioner may ask for vengeance. But after all of that, six, the petitioner has a certainty of hearing, believing that not only has God heard the

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Prayer, the requests are cried, but God is already operating in prayer and then often ends with praise and thanksgiving. All right, so we've looked then at what lament is generally, what lament is in scripture and specifically in the Psalms. Now let's talk just a bit about music before we move to look at particular musical examples of lament. Music, a combination of sound and silence, telegraphs God's beauty.

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Mark Roving reminds us that in lament, music frames our speech about loss and death and desire for mercy and rest. Music expresses an inexpressible reality about our human experience. There are things we can do in music that simple words just cannot convey. It can be instrumental.

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It can have words. It can be in a language that we don't understand. But it's something about listening to that music when our hearts and our minds and our bodies are open that can be transforming. And so when we listen to music, I'm inviting you to not only listen with your ears, but listen with your mind, listen with your body, and listen with your spirit, to be open to the move of God in this place.

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Music again expresses an inexpressible reality about human experience. Music helps us to see holistically. Creating and engaging music affords us infinite possibilities of experiencing God's goodness. And when we experience God's goodness, as Brother Lynch mentioned earlier in his presentation, we get to experience transfiguration.

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If you don't remember what that is, that's your assignment. Go look up the Mark, especially the Markan text for transfiguration, and look at who appears and who gets to speak and what happens. Not only does experiencing God's beauty transfigure us, but such aesthetic experiences remind us that life comes with a cornucopia of experiences and feelings, beauty, love, suffering, and justices. And I would please invite you not to shut down on your feelings and don't think you're wrong or bad for feeling what.

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You feel feelings are feelings. They're not thoughts. They're not even actions. They're feelings.

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And when we stuff down our feelings, when we stuff down the grief, we get into some serious, serious problems. We want to give lament room in our lives. We want to instruct and direct one another to use common sense and to sing and sing our hearts out to God. Let every detail in our lives, words, actions, whatever be done in the name of Jesus the Christ, thanking God, our creative parent, every step of the way.

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And that's what the author of Colossians 3 reminds us. So to experience lament in music, we're going to listen to laments from several genres. The first one will be the embodiment, the incarnation, through the work of Alvin Ailey. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater began in March 1958 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

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He brought together a group of young dancers, and that performance changed forever the perception of American dance. The Ailey Company has performed for over 25 million people at theaters in 48 states and 71 countries on six continents. The signature work for the Ailey Company is Revelation. And in 2008, a US congressional resolution designated the company as quoting a vital American cultural ambassador to the world.

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Revelation uses African-American spirituals, song sermons, gospel songs, and holy blues that fervently explore the places of deepest grief and holiest joy in the soul. From the work Revelations, and if you ever get a chance to see the Ailey Company, please do. We will listen and view from the spiritual I've been viewed. I've been used And I've been so I've been talked about Show you Go see Ailey when they come to town or go and hear them.

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It's worthwhile going to New York to see them perform. So some of you may not know exactly, what is a spiritual? My language for spirituals is that they're chants of collective exorcism. They're songs that were created by those who were enslaved.

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And please, when you have your grandchildren reading their revised history books saying that this was a type of chosen work for people, that's a bald-faced lie. People were kidnapped, sold from Africa, brought here. There was nothing romantic about slavery.

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And these songs were spontaneously created. They were not composed, but created as they worked and they're later arranged. So anytime you usually hear a spiritual, it is an arrangement of the spiritual. So I've been buked, remember the scorn and the troubles that most people experience during the course of life.

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Nevertheless, even though they're taunted, even though they're abused, they say, I'm not going to lay my legend down. I'm not going to stop believing God. And also another erroneous thought is some people think that when those who were enslaved came here they were tabula off so they had no faith.

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Many were Christians, many practiced African traditional religions, others were Muslim. So especially for you history buffs we need to clean some of it up. Lament and Opera. Many of you know the story of Madame Butterfly, but what is an opera?

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An opera is a dramatic work where one or more acts, where music with instruments and singers and they tell a story. Madame Butterfly by Puccini premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1904. The title character, Madama Butterfly, also known as Chocho-san, is a young Japanese geishu who desperately believes that her arrangement with a visiting U.S. naval officer, Pinkerton, is a lover in permanent marriage.

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He knows it's not, it's just a farce, he just wants a little skin, shall we sit in a little cuddling while he's on tour in Japan. But Chocho-san thinks that it's forever. She later finds out after Pinkerton has left and comes back, he's married, And.

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And he wants to take the child of their marriage back to the United States. She's broken. She realizes that all is lost. And that's when she sings her aria Tutu Piccolo Idio.

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I chose Callis for that because I think she saw embodies. I probably could have found a clip that actually showed what happened, but I wanted you to hear the power and how vulnerable she allowed herself to perform. I mean, back in the day, people would literally, just like they'd stand in line when the new Star Wars movies come and when the new iPhones came, well, people would do that when Carlos would sing and she had a sort of tragic life.

00:41:57.080 - 00:42:12.520

It was at the end of the opera, what happens is that Butterfly realizes she's waited patiently for this man to come back. He does not, he comes back with another woman. And she put all her hope in that. And she also idolizes her son.

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So in the culture of that time, all she can do is do an honorable death. And that's to commit suicide, just as her father had committed suicide. And so when we study literature, music, life, it's always important to, before we judge, is to study the culture and to understand why people do what they do. And as ministers,

00:42:38.040 - 00:43:05.480

And as Christian educators, sometimes the best thing is not to say anything rather than say something stupid or say something that could harm a person because we never know, why is this person coming to me, talking to me about this? And for those of you who had CPE, you remember, most times people already know what they need to do or what God is calling them to do. They need some affirmation. So the worst thing in the role is for us to step in sometimes with our biases.

00:43:05.960 - 00:43:38.920

and say something that could harm them or cause them to commit suicide, to jump off a bridge, or to go and do suicide by police, what have you. Lament in Hymn. And everyone knows what the hymn is, so I don't have to really spend a lot of time describing it. But just remember that it's the purpose of adoration or prayer, because sometimes in some of our contemporary music, our labels are more fluid, and sometimes we're not sure exactly what we're singing.

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I selected this particular hymn because it's a poignant hymn and it also, I think, speaks to what lament does in our hymns. It's based upon the scripture of Jeremiah 31:3, The Lord appeared to him or to me, depending upon your translation, from far away or a long time ago, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I continue my faithfulness to you. Come ye Disconsolate Wherever you lay

00:44:29.600 - 00:45:49.800

which come to the mercy seat fervently fervently kneel Your wounded heart It tells your anguish For earth hath no sorrow But heaven, heaven cannot heal. Next time you need a break or you're getting ready for your Sunday school lesson, go through your hymn book and look at how many hymns are related to the Psalms of Lament.

00:45:50.360 - 00:46:04.760

You have 150 Psalms, but a large majority of the Psalms are laments. So we've got a lot of literature about us. It's just important that we start to use it. And so I wanted to include something from hip-hop, because many of you are working with the millennial generation.

00:46:04.760 - 00:46:19.880

You have kids, grandkids. You need to know the language. You can't say, well, you need to speak like I do. Well, our parents had to learn how we spoke, and generations need to be able to speak to different generations and understand, first of all, that hip-hop is a culture.

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The music that comes out of hip-hop, or one of the kinds of music, is rap. And not all rap is gangster rap. Unfortunately, what happened with rap is what happens with a lot of music. Once the suits in the industry find out that it's popular and can make a lot of money, then they put a template on it.

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So that's when all the MFs and the other negative derogatory curse words began to be put in hip-hop. But hip-hop started off as protest music, both in the islands and in New York City, especially New York, when they were building all the bridges And they didn't talk to people in the community. They were saying, why are you taking our communities away?

00:46:56.120 - 00:47:14.040

So that's how hip hop started, just like the spirituals as protest music. And they look at issues of love and war and peace to deal with literal, figurative, emotional, and realized death and life issues throughout the population. Hip hop is a culture. Rap is one of the forms of music.

00:47:14.680 - 00:47:39.800

In the latter 20th century and early 21st century, rap with hip-hop has become a platform for social commentary. If you've been watching any of the Black Lives Matter or any of the other protests, you'll hear young people doing communal prophetic speech. The song we'll listen to part of today is by Pak Shakur, dates 1971 to 1995.

00:47:40.200 - 00:47:58.280

He was a renaissance man whose life and lyrics exuded violence. He was a vociferous reader, a keen observer of life, and listened to a variety of kinds of music. He was brilliant. The problem was before he was 11 years old, he and his mother, who was a part of the Black Panthers, had, which was a good thing in many respects, but because they moved so much.

00:47:59.160 - 00:48:15.320

How can you be a whole person and you've lived in 19 different places before you're 11 years old? He also went to the Baltimore School of Arts. He also did some prison time. He read everything from the classics, history, feminist theory to poetry, mysticism, philosophy, and cultural studies.

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Amid his deep hurt and anguish, he often expressed profound religious sensibilities, embracing, according to Daniel Hodge, a post-soul theology, which includes a multicultural, multi-ethnic approach to post-modernity that honors the poor and the disenfranchised. So listen to No More Tears. Shall not fear no man but God. Though I walk in the valley of death.

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If I sit down before I wait. Please, I won't tell you that. Back in elementary Thrived on misery Left me alone, I grew up amongst the dime breed Inside my mind, couldn't find a place to rest Until I got that dove like shattered on my chest I'm not living in the past You wanna last, speed of first to blast, remember Cato No longer wait to see deceits, call on the sirens Seen them murdered in the streets, now rest in peace Dare heaven for a G, remember me?

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So many homies in the cemetery, shed so many tears Ah, I'm suffering through the gears Lord, I lost so many pigs, shed so many tears. Now that I'm struggling in this business, by any means. Label me greedy, getting green, but seldom seen.

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And the world 'cause I'm cursed. I'm having visions of leaving here in the hurts. God, take me away from all the pressure. And all the pain Show me some happiness again I'm going blind I spent my time in the cell Ain't living well I know my destiny is hell When did I fail?

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My life is in denial And when I die Baptized in eternal fire Shed so many tears Lord, I suck the tears And shed so many tears You can get it on YouTube to listen to the rest of it. YouTube is a one, and Google are wonderful tools. And there are a lot of variations within hip hop culture in that it's not only about the music, but it's also about the dress and the bebopping and the DJing and the poetry and spoken word.

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And it's like, who would have thought to get young persons back to doing poetry? That's what hip hop does. Going back in time, we'll now look at a blues song. Blues is a musical style or genre emerging out of African-American communities in the deep south of the United States around the end of the 19th century.

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It developed from roots in traditional African music, combined European folk music, spirituals, work songs, et cetera. shouts, chants, and rhymed, simple narrative ballads. The blues form, which also happens sometimes in jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, engages a call and response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions. And because you have Austin City Limits here and South by Southwest, for those who live in Austin, you have a lot of opportunity to actually hear live music.

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They also use blue notes, or worried notes, which are often thirds or fifths, are also known as an important part of the sound, including the walking bass. For the blues, I've fought a person's life who embodied the blues and also could sing very well with Billie Holiday, whose dates are 1915 to 1959. She's a United States jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly 30 years, and she will sing for A Strange Fruit. Southern trees that have strange fruit.

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Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots. Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh.

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Then the sudden smell of birthing flesh. I'm... thought about including gospel music and there are some other forms of music. There would not be enough time but I could not come to Austin and not include country music.

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Good old brother Willie Nelson. Country music is a form of popular music originating actually again in the rural southern US. It is traditionally a mixture of ballads and dance tunes played characteristically on the fiddle, the guitar, steel, guitar, drums, and keyboard. Nelson, born in 1933, is a United States musician, singer-songwriter, author, poet, actor, activist.

00:54:05.160 - 00:54:33.640

He's done several movies and a lot of things to a series acclaim and a lot of commercial excess. He is one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofues and the legalization of marijuana.

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So when you go back, because I know that you're going to be so inspired by our conversation today, and you want to learn about all this music, start to note the difference that geography plays. Because, for example, with hip-hop, there was a big, always a dispute between East Coast and West Coast. When you look at the gospels, what was happening in Chicago, what was happening in Memphis versus what was happening in Louisiana and Texas, so geography is very important. Let's listen to the...

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of Willie doing Nightlife with the amazing B.B. King. When the evening sun goes down You're gonna find me hanging 'round The nightlife ain't no good life But it's my life Many people Just like me Dreaming up, old used to be Nightlife ain't no goodbye But it's my life Well now listen to the blues, they're blessed

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Listen to what the blues have said Mine is just another scene From the world of broken dreams life ain't no good life But it's my life Conclusions. In sum, the gifts of creating and singing and living lament is about giving oneself and one's community the permission to name the loss, to experience the myriad emotions in healthy ways, and in the process to see one's own part in the situation, to see who, what the perpetrators have done, including God.

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It's okay to get mad with God and to make peace with reality. So that understand when we think about lament, it is a tool. It is a way of thinking. It's a process.

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When we look at various catalysts and characterizations in our lives, there are a lot of things that precipitate our loss, not only death, the loss of a job, the breaking of a strong relationship, divorce. There are many things that can push us to have those kind of experiences. Or if we have an accident and lose the capacity to walk or talk, all of these are losses and we need to be more mindful of them so that we can really use them.

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There are complications and challenges after the fact. Everybody does not get better when they go to the hospital after they have the surgery. Everybody does not recoup. Sometimes people lose jobs where they're getting six figures.

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They may not get back to getting a six-figure job. And so we have to deal with those things. At the same time, one of the ways that we can help each other is to have a community of accountability. It's to throw our arms around each other.

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We all should have someone who say, Girl, you're looking a little tired. How are you doing? How are you doing after you lost your wife? How are you doing after you lost your son or your daughter?

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How are you doing after the kids moved away in the empty nest? We need to process these because All of these are transitions that involve losses and it affects our health. Some of us aren't sick on medication right now because we're still holding on to the stress of a major loss.

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And stresses and losses don't just happen in our heads. It affects our total being. It's okay then to cry through lament. It's okay, whatever feelings we have, they are okay.

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But some of us, good old Puritan and Scottish and German and all those other kind of things got to be stored. Suck it up. Well, you know, keep sucking it up. And the more we suck up, the more we die on the inside.

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And so we can use lament to create a new life and a new identity for ourselves. Because when we're in marriage, that's one relationship. When one partner dies, it's a new identity. After divorce, new identity.

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After the kids are grown and on their own, hopefully grown and on their own, out of the house. paying their own bills. When that happens, that's a different identity. We still have kids.

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They're always going to be our children, but it's not the same level of responsibility. So who are we? So I invite you to engage lament, to not be bitter, and as Lynch said earlier, enjoy life. I mean, this is it.

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There is no such thing. OK, we're going to dress rehearsal, and we're going to push a reset button. We get to reset this moment, but we don't get to reset our lives. But lament is a tool that can help us.

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Thank you.