A classmate said to me, "My parents were killed in the Holocaust." As I heard these words, images and questions flooded my mind. We were in our fourth week of the ICJS Spring Mini-Course, Praying at the Edge: Suffering, the Psalms of Lament, and God. The instructor is Dr. Rosann Catalano. Here is what continues to swirl around in my head: profound suffering washes away the boundaries of our lives ... the ancient Israelites dignified the experience of pain by giving it a language of it's own ... laments are prayers that are fearless and assaultive ... they are faith's "last, best hope" for our moving from chaos to new possibility ... we will be profoundly altered by coming through chaos because we have acted on our faith and opted to speak to God rather than remain silent and accepting of our pain. Laments, Dr. Catalano tells us, are a raw and frank encounter with God in which we do not edit our words. We accuse, we challenge, and we bombard God with our lament, our prayer. Whether individual or communal cries of distress, the lament hopes to engage God in the pain, that hearing our prayer, God might deliver us from our anguish and our affliction. A lament is always "directed hope." "Hope in God" is the ground in which the lament is rooted.

We learn about the "rhetorical structure" of the lament. As pain is put into words, so begins a process, a movement. Once you "step into" a lament, you are propelled through the prayer; your suffering is reconstructed into a different reality. In the process of "emptying yourself" in the act of lamenting, some-thing wondrous occurs. In the praying of a lament psalm, in giving voice to pain, the speaker begins to imagine new pos-sibilities: God entering their life in turmoil; God delivering them from their affliction; their voices joined with the chorus of countless faithful from ages past whose lament was trans-formed into a new song of praise to the God who did wondrous things for them.

This course generated so many questions: "If God can be engaged in my pain, He will not turn a deaf ear, will He?" "How did it ever happen that my life became so turbulent? Did God blink?" "What does faith do in the midst of pain?" "How is a cry of lament transformed into a shout of joy?"

I wonder how all this sounds to other students in the sixth decade of their lives? My future begins to include possibilities of darkness, fear, pain, and loneliness. With a new awareness of these prayers of ancient Israel, I have a sense of relief knowing that there is a form of expression that has a daring, a precision, and a depth I had not previously known.

It is impossible for me to imagine what were the thoughts and feelings of my classmate who spoke of his parents and the Holocaust. His very presence in this course on suffering and the Psalms of Lament made me want to hear more from him.

At the end of this class, I am filled with new ideas and new questions. I am eager to sign up for next semester's offering, regardless of the theme.